Case studies of EIA in practice - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 276

that significant economies of scale could be obtained by developing a single large plant in
the county rather than several smaller ones. As a result, following a tendering process, an
application was submitted at the end of 1991 for a large energy-from-waste incinerator in
Portsmouth, in the south of the county on a site selected by the CC (Petts 1995). The
capacity of the plant was 400,000 tonnes per annum, which represented two-thirds of the
household waste arising in the county (Snary 2002). The proposed location was on the
site of one of the county's redundant incinerators, which had been closed in 1991 after
failing to meet the latest emission standards.
The proposal met with much local opposition, from both local residents and ultimately
the relevant local authority, Portsmouth City Council. Objections focused on a number of
environmental issues, including the health risks posed by emissions from the plant;
visual, noise and traffic impacts; and the close proximity of the site to residential areas.
Policy concerns were also raised, in particular that, by concentrating on incineration as
the preferred waste option, the promotion of recycling and waste minimization in the
county would be adversely affected. In the event, the CC (the consenting authority for
this type of project at the time) decided that it could not support the application, on the
grounds that the proposal was too large and did not form part of a more integrated waste
management strategy for the area (Snary 2002).
The failure to gain approval for the proposed scheme resulted in a change of approach
from the County Council, as Petts (1995) explains:
By the summer of 1992 the County Council had failed to gain approval
for the plant and was facing an urgent task to find a solution to the waste
disposal problem. The traditional approach had failed. While the [county's
waste management] plan which had supported the need for [energy-from-
waste] had been subject to public consultation with relatively little adverse
comment, this was now regarded as too passive a process and it seemed
that the real concerns and priorities of the community had not been
recognised by the County [Council]. There had not been strong support of
the need for an integrated approach to waste management and there had
been little recognition of the need to “sell” [energy-from-waste] to the
public. The proponents had been overly optimistic about their ability to
push the project through with the standard, informationbased approach to
public consultation.
Faced with these problems, the CC embarked on the development of a more integrated
and publicly acceptable household waste management strategy (Snary 2002). The
Council's new approach involved an extensive proactive public involvement programme,
launched in 1993, to examine the various options for dealing with household waste in the
county. The aim was to attempt to establish “a broad base of public support for a strategy
which could be translated into new facilities” (Petts 1995). As part of this process,
Community Advisory Forums were established in the three constituent parts of the
county, based on the model of citizens' panels. Membership included a mix of people
with different interests and backgrounds, including those with little prior knowledge of
waste issues. At the end of the process (which lasted for six months), the forums
presented their conclusions to the CC. The broad consensus reached was that: