Celebrations And Jubilations

Residents Against Pollution have something to celebrate at the end of 2008.

We started 2008 with a threat to the health and safety of local residents. A consultation began on the North London Waste Plan, which was looking at new sites for waste disposal across North London. There was a risk that at least one of the facilities could be a new incinerator or expansion of the Edmonton incinerator (under the euphemistic guise of Energy from Waste (EfW) plants) and the Blackhorse Lane regeneration area was earmarked as a potential new site.

At the start of the year, local residents launched our campaign against these plans with a public meeting of 40 angry residents in the Blackhorse Lane area. We demanded: Hands off Blackhorse Lane, No to Incinerators, and Give us a Real Say! We also protested about the fact that around two-thirds of existing waste facilities in North London are in the working class area along the Lea Valley, mainly Enfield and Waltham Forest, and that half the new proposed sites were in Waltham Forest.

When the results of the first phase of the consultation, published in the summer, confirmed our suspicions, we called a protest at the town hall. Around 20 local residents gave out leaflets door-to-door and at the tube station and college.

In a short time and with hardly any money, we reached around 30,000 people with our material – considerably more than the 20 people the consultants managed to get along to their workshop! 30 people came to our lively protest, and a small group lobbied another council meeting two weeks later. The Waltham Forest Guardian reported on our campaign three times.

Suddenly councillors, the consultants and the waste authority all wanted to talk to us. We invited them to attend our next meeting, where once again around 40 local people made our views clear. Though it is still of some disappointment and no little disenchantment, that the three Higham Hill Ward Councillors (including Cllr Patrick Smith who is on the LBWF Environment Scrutiny Committee) seem reluctant to honour their offer of a community meeting with RAP supporters. We are pursuing this matter further.

As a result of these actions and meetings we are pleased to report that our message seems to be getting through. Though we only have verbal hints at this stage, it looks like Blackhorse Lane is now unlikely to be chosen as a new waste site. We are trying to get something in writing, and we won’t know for sure till the “preferred options” stage of the consultation process is reached in May, when it will be clear whether Blackhorse Lane is still an option. But this is great progress!

The North London Waste Authority has now voted on its plans for the type of technology they want to use over the next few years. Their document is entitled “A Future Without Incineration”! Once again there are big warnings attached to this – the plans still have to be approved by government, and they are dependent on private finance, which in the current disastrous economic climate is far from assured. Many in the RAP campaign believe that waste disposal should not be a privatised service but should be brought back in-house.

Nonetheless, a written plan to avoid incineration (i.e. not to build a new or expand the existing Energy from Waste [EfW] plant) across seven North London boroughs is a huge achievement. This is in a context where both the European Union and the government are pushing for a big increase in incineration as a solution to the problem of landfill sites.

But our campaign argued that incineration is no solution – it is dangerous, polluting, and there are much safer and “greener” technologies which a genuine plan to reduce, re-use and recycle waste should utilise. We have added a local, organised and active voice to the national propaganda from campaigns such as Friends of the Earth, and it would seem we have had an effect.

We cannot be complacent. Nothing is guaranteed. RAP campaigners are continuing to keep up the pressure on local councillors, and are ready to campaign again in May next year. But we end the year with something to celebrate: campaigning works!