Waste strategy focus on recycling

The plans centre around creating four new recycling and waste treatment centres, one of which is the controversial proposed plant at Bolton Road in Manvers.

In addition to the multi-million-pound Manvers waste centre, rubbish collected from homes and businesses across the three authorities would be recycled and composted at sites in Sandall Stones Road, Doncaster, Hatfield Power Park and on land within the Corus steelworks in Rotherham.

The overall aim of the strategy, which will run until 2026, is to divert at least 75 per cent of waste from landfill and instead treat it within the boundaries of the three boroughs.

If the targets are hit, the amount of waste going to landfill will be reduced from 567,000 tons in 2010 to 466,000 tons in 2026. If the initial targets are exceeded, however, the amount of rubbish going to landfill could fall as low as 305,000 tons over the next 16 years.

A Barnsley Council spokesman said: "The development of this plan began in 2007 and this is the last opportunity for public involvement before the strictly formal publication and submission stages.

"After this current consultation, the councils will finalise the plan and submit it to the government later this year.

"Next year an independent inspector will conduct an Examination in Public and then issue the councils with a binding report."

Detailed plans by two rival bidders for the proposed plant in Manvers, which would process an anticipated 200,000 tons of waste from Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster, have already gone on display.

A total of 77.4m of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding for the scheme has already been secured from the Government, though the total cost is expected to be far greater.

One of the two proposals, by SITA UK Land Lease, involves developing the Dearne Valley Treatment and Energy Centre which would have a recycling area and an "energy recovery" area with a tall chimney. That energy recovery area would burn waste to produce electricity.

The rival plan, from 3SE, a consortium of Shanks Group and Scottish and Southern Energy, would not involve incineration and would instead see the waste "biodryed" and turned into fuel to be burned at the Ferrybridge power station, near Knottingley.

The preferred bidder will be selected by the end of the year and the chosen facility is set open in summer 2015.

Prior to the Manvers plant being built, the strategy would also see waste sites opening up at Sandall Stones Road and Hatfield Power Park.

Between them, both sites would recycle, compost and recover more than 500,000 tons of waste.

Proposals for the Corus site, meanwhile, would see a plant opening in 2021 to recycle and compost between 250,000 and 400,000 tons of rubbish which would otherwise have gone to landfill.

A Barnsley Council spokesman added: "No new landfill sites have been identified because there is sufficient landfill capacity within our existing landfill sites to dispose of our leftover waste until the end of the plan period.

The first consultation event will run at St Andrew's Church Hall in Bolton-upon-Dearne from 11am to 8pm on Wednesday, July 7.

Silverwood Miners Welfare in Dalton, Rotherham, will host a session from 11.30am to 7pm on Thursday, July 15, and the final event will run at Stainforth Community Resource Centre in Doncaster from 12.30pm to 8.30pm on Friday, July 16.

Any comments on the proposed waste plan must be returned to one of the three councils by Monday, August 9.