Critics slam dump plan

Their efforts have met with some success. The company behind the scheme has re-examined its original plan and made significant changes in a bid to appease objectors.

What we do with our household rubbish is one of the hottest topics of the 21st Century.

We are told to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Despite this each household produces tonnes of rubbish each year.

Brighton and Hove City Council and East Sussex County Council have contracted waste company Onyx, now Veolia Environmental Services, to deal with our household waste.

At the heart of the big plan for the next 25 years is an incinerator at Newhaven to burn our waste, recycling sites and composting sites. The aim is to have as little waste as possible burned.

To make this work, Veolia says it needs a materials recovery facility (MRF) and waste transfer station (WTS) in Brighton and Hove. The company identified the former abattoir site in Hollingdean Lane, Brighton, as an ideal location. To Veolia this site made sense as the land was already used for industrial purposes and is adjacent to the Cityclean depot, where all the city's dustcarts, roadsweepers and recycling lorries are based.

Veolia wants to build a high tech MRF/WTS with all the rubbish under one roof. The rubbish generated by residents will be driven into the building where it will be sorted and then transported out again to either the incinerator, if it gains permission, or to centres which use the recyclable material.

The facility will sort and prepare paper, cans, plastic bottles and glass. When the original application for the facility was submitted to the city council in January 2005, residents launched a campaign against it, saying it would create traffic, pollution and noise. The proposed facility was also adjacent to the Downs Infants and Junior Schools which angered the governors and parents.

Then, of course, there is the notorious railway bridge which crosses Hollingdean Road. It is narrow and large vehicles are often forced to give way to oncoming traffic as there is not enough room to pass. At peak times the approaches to the bridge become heavily congested.

In the past year John Collis, the project manager for Veolia Environmental Services, has been barracked at public meetings and even visited residents in their own homes to put across the views of Veolia.

But after a year, Veolia decided to re-evaluate its application and has made some significant changes in the new application which has now been submitted to the city council. There are 41 modifications to the application which include a special tunnel so lorries will not pass by the nearby school playground.

Mr Collis told The Argus: "We are pleased we have been able to listen to the comments we received on the previous application and reflect the views of local residents, bearing in mind that we do not have a 'do nothing' option. Recent figures on the increased level of recycling in the area demonstrate the value the facility will bring to the community, while the addition of certain design features will further minimise the impact on local residents."

There are a large number of modifications to the application but two of the key changes are the reduction in the maximum amount of waste it will deal with. Originally the facility applied to deal with a maximum of 200,000 tonnes a year. Veolia has reduced that to 160,000 tonnes.

Another key modification, which can be seen on a series of new diagrams is the addition of the tunnel. With the former design of the facility lorries would be pulling up and driving past the school, which parents said was adjacent to the playground, endangering children's health.

Veolia has added a special tunnel to the design nearest to the playground so lorries will carry out all their dumping business and transportation inside a tunnel or the building.

The modifications are broken down into headings. Some are more key than others.

Under transport the main changes include new road markings at the railway bridge and signage as well as the road being straightened so motorists can see under the bridge as they approach it. The bend in the road under the bridge is currently a blind bend.

There would be a commitment to restrict lorry movements in some residential areas. Lorries would leave the site and travel up the Lewes Road to join the A27.

Under landscaping and design, the lorry tunnel is included, as well as an extensive planting scheme to ensure screens of greenery enhance the appearance of the site.

Another key change is to maintain pedestrian access along the length of Hollingdean Lane.

Under planning, Veolia explains why the alternative suggested site of Hangleton Bottom is ruled out. Mr Collis said the site was too small to sit the WTS/MRF on the land in addition to the Cityclean depot, which would mean lorries making more journeys per day to travel to and from the Cityclean depot in Hollingdean Lane and to Hangleton Bottom.

Under air quality and noise, Veolia is ensuring its vehicles are fitted with lowsounding reversing alarms to reduce noise. Special acoustic measures are being introduced to the building to cut noise.

Under natural and cultural heritage, the company has given a commitment to place a recommended number of sparrow and bat boxes within the facility. It has even said it will pay for a peregrine box on one of the nearby residential tower blocks.

Residents were also concerned about possible smell from the site but Veolia is confident there will not be any odour. Mr Collis said: "The dry recyclables handled at the facility will not give rise to odours.

Such materials will be processed and transported out of the site. Residual waste will be handled within an enclosed building fitted with dust and odour control equipment and will be bulked up and transported out of the site."

Residents were also concerned about lorry movements from the site. Veolia says it will be using low-emission Euro 4 vehicles and at its worst-case maximum, the facility would generate 66 lorry movements a day based on an operating day of 11 hours.

This would result in an average of six trips an hour in or out of the site. Despite the changes, Dump The Dump campaigners seem determined the facility should not be built on the site. Members of the campaign met with John Collis and Nick Holland from Veolia this week to preview the new planning application before it was registered with the council.

Dump The Dump's reaction to the new application is that it does not include any major changes to the original plan. The groups says the reduction in capacity to 160,000 tonnes of waste is hardly significant and claim the green roof and the tunnel will not remove all pollution. Dump The Dump says Veolia admits there will be a 0.5 per cent increase in the noise and air quality pollution at the Vogue Gyratory.

A statement from Dump The Dump states: "They do not consider this to be significant. They do not mention that the 44-tonne juggernauts used to transfer rubbish and recyclables from the site will create a massive impact upon the local road network in Upper Hollingdean Road and Hollingdean Road and consequently a major health risk to the increasing local population.

"Dump The Dump does not consider the new application, which will run in parallel with the old one until one of them is withdrawn, to offer any benefit or attention to the major issues raised by the local communities in opposing the original scheme.

The original plans were discredited, the new ones offer no improvement. This revised plan amounts to little more than cosmetic tweaking."

Ed Stark, of Dump The Dump, said: "There is no significant change to the application. There has been a nominal change in the capacity which has been reduced to 160,000 per annum but the actual building is going to be the same size which means the capacity could soon be increased. There are 41 changes but none of them are substantive changes to the structure. I think we are back to the problem of the overintensification of use with the site."

Mr Stark said the campaign would begin its objections to the new application which has to be treated separately from the first application.

There were more than 3,000 letters of objection to the original application. Any objections to the current one have to be made within the next 21 days and cannot be carried over from the earlier application. Dump The Dump leader Sandra Staufer said: "It is absolutely vital that people act now to ensure this second plan doesn't slip through despite the best efforts of the thousands of people who have objected to the idea of a rubbish dump in Hollingdean. We implore everyone to write new letters to Brighton and Hove City Council so they get the message - again - that we think this dump is a rubbish idea."

If planning permission is granted, work could start in 2006 with operations beginning in 2007. The application is likely to go before the council's planning committee in the summer.