Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of air pollutants generated by the Viridor energy recovery facility incinerator on Beddington Lane in South London.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) regulates the Energy Recovery Facility (Erf) in Beddington Lane, Sutton through an Environmental Permit under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010. The permit has strict conditions relating to acceptable levels of emissions of substances. The ErF operator (Viridor) is required to continuously and periodically monitor the emissions from the Erf stacks and submit the monitoring data quarterly to the EA.
The EA assesses all data submitted including breaches in emission limits for trends and requires the operator to investigate issues and take actions to rectify them.
The quarterly monitoring data that covers January 2020 is due to be submitted to the EA before end of April 2020. The EA have not received any notifications for breaches in emission limits during January 2020.
Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of air pollution in (a) the UK and (b) Carshalton and Wallington constituency.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Air quality is generally improving in the UK, as set out in the annual National Statistics report at the following URL: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/air-quality-statistics.
There are 171 automatic national monitoring stations producing hourly air quality measurements in the UK operated by the Environment Agency on behalf of Defra. Near real-time measurements from these sites and further data tools can be found on the UK-AIR website (https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk).
There are no automatic national monitoring stations in Carshalton and Wallington constituency. However, the London Borough of Sutton also assesses air quality using three automatic monitors within the constituency boundary: two are industrial monitoring stations at Beddington Lane, and the other site is a roadside site in central Wallington. Near real-time measurements from these sites can be found on the London Air website which is managed by King’s College London (http://londonair.org.uk). Air quality is improving at all three sites, with only the Wallington site providing an exceedance of the annual mean limit value for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in 2019 (based on provisional data).
The Borough also uses 15 passive monitors to measure NO2 within the constituency boundaries; measurements are made available through Annual Status Reports (https://www.sutton.gov.uk/info/200497/pollution/1232/air_pollution/3). Only two exceedances of the annual mean limit value for NO2 were observed in 2018 (at Rosehill Roundabout and London Road, Hackbridge) with levels at most sites either showing a lower or similar value compared with 2017 levels.
Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to help prevent the occurrence of fire incidents at waste incinerator sites.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No assessment has been made of trends in the number of fires being reported at waste incinerator sites since 2015.
In England all incinerators that are regulated by the Environment Agency (such as energy from waste plants that burn municipal waste) are required to have a management system which identifies and minimises the risk of pollution due to accidents, which will include fires. All new incinerators must also have an approved fire prevention plan before they are allowed to start operating.
Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of trends in the number of fires being reported at waste incinerator sites since 2015.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No assessment has been made of trends in the number of fires being reported at waste incinerator sites since 2015.
In England all incinerators that are regulated by the Environment Agency (such as energy from waste plants that burn municipal waste) are required to have a management system which identifies and minimises the risk of pollution due to accidents, which will include fires. All new incinerators must also have an approved fire prevention plan before they are allowed to start operating.
Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what comparative assessment she has made of the environmental effects of mechanical biological treatment waste processes and waste incineration processes.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has not made such an assessment. Residual waste should be treated in accordance with the waste hierarchy.
To assist decision makers, the department published information on the mechanical biological treatment of waste in 2013. This can be found on the GOV.UK website at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/mechanical-biological-treatment-of-municipal-solid-waste.
Information on energy from waste (incineration with energy recovery) was published in 2014 at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-from-waste-a-guide-to-the-debate.