Plans to build a waste incinerator at Newhaven looked dead and buried at the end of last year as councillors in East Sussex ripped-up carefully prepared waste proposals.

Not only did they throw out plans to build a burner in the port, but also told Brighton and Hove Council to find room for one within its boundaries.

Into the waste basket with the Newhaven incinerator went equally controversial proposals for land-raising, where waste is piled up from ground level, in the Chiddingly and Ripe area of the Low Weald.

Six months later, almost all of what councillors wanted has been overturned or ignored in a report by county council officers that has been endorsed by the council's ruling cabinet.

The main change of tack is that instead of the council choosing specific sites for incinerators, land-raising and recycling centres, it is effectively leaving the waste industry to choose where it wants to build, based on criteria laid down by council experts.

While Newhaven, in the west, and Mountfield Mine, near Robertsbridge in the east, remain the most likely sites for incinerators in East Sussex, contractors could apply for permission to build just about anywhere.

In addition, the council has not found sites for recycling centres and waste transfer stations at any of the county's main towns outside the Ouse Valley, risking the same free-for-all.

John Ballance, the councillor responsible for Brighton and Hove's side of the plans, voiced his council's despair at the latest manoeuvre by East Sussex.

He said: "I don't understand where they are coming from at the moment."

Surrey's attempts to produce a criteria-based plan were severely criticised after a public inquiry in 1998, when a Government planning inspector told the council to start again and draw up a site-specific plan.

Since then, private contractor Surrey Waste Management has applied for planning permission to build incinerators at two sites, Capel and Redhill.

Capel was on the original list of council incinerator sites before it opted for a criteria-based plan.

But the Redhill site was only ever identified as a recycling centre in the original list and people living in the area had no idea a burner might be built nearby until a planning application was submitted.

Rik Child, one of Brighton and Hove's three Green councillors, said the county council should abandon the criteria-based plan or risk the same uncertainty.

He said: "This is a bad idea. Firstly, because it is moral cowardice and, secondly, it is going to cause lots of planning problems later."

The plans are expected to begin the first of two formal consultations in October, almost certainly too soon for a promised public forum to have much of an effect.

Kathryn Field, the county councillor responsible for environmental policy, said the plans had to be pushed forward.

She said: "We have to find a way forward effectively and get the plans on deposit officially. It is not moral cowardice at all, it is a way to get the plans forward."

On the forum, she added: "It is not cosmetic. It is a genuine attempt to let people voice their opinions."

Tory county councillor Simon Sinnatt said it was hypocritical to push for incineration when county council leader David Rogers has signed the Lib Dem's waste charter for Sussex, which stated there should be a presumption against incineration in favour of recycling and composting and waste plans should have radical recycling targets.

The plans now set a target for recycling household waste of just 33 per cent by 2010 - in line with a Government waste strategy that was itself criticised as too timid.

Much of the rest would be burned in the two planned energy-from-waste incinerators.

Other opponents of the plans, such as the pressure group Defenders of the Ouse Valley and Estuary (Dove), point to the onward march of the tendering process for the £1 billion contract, as shown by shortlisting the six companies.

Invitations for firms to tender are expected in November, before the end of the first of two consultations on the waste plan.

The decision to award the contract, scheduled for next December, will precede the public inquiry into the plan by several months.

Joelle van Tinteren, of Dove, said: "They want to go for the quick, easy, expensive fix of incineration. For us that is not a solution."