Parish News
25/03/2006 - Tip firm 'could take £1 billion'
A BILLION pound business could be created if Rock Common is turned into a rubbish tip, it has been claimed. At a parish meeting held on Monday (March 20) Washington resident Luciano Fiori said he had learned from Veolia Environmental Services that landfill was worth £18 a ton.
Based on the company's own predictions of 300 lorries per day, he calculated it could take £26 million a year for 25 years.
"That exceeds £650 million over the life of the landfill at today's rates," he said. "With inflation you're looking at a £1bn business. That's the size of the problem we have to face." Around 200 residents crowded into Washington's parish church for the meeting, where it was agreed an action group would be formed to fight the plan.
The landfill proposal was unveiled by Veolia earlier this month with an exhibition at the Frankland Arms pub. The company, formerly known as Onyx, has said it intends to put in a planning application in the coming weeks.
Speaking at the parish meeting this week, resident Steve Logan said: "I'm a resident at the caravan park. If this happens I've got no financial loss, I can just take my caravan and go. "But it's going to wreck this lovely landscape of yours. It's not about financial loss. "My son is seven and if this happens he'll be 31 before they stop to cap it." Mr Logan said he did not believe that landfill was a viable way forward, and said in these times of drought a lake would be a valuable water source.
Parish councillor Lesley Britt said she had been researching the issue, and had learned that while the county council could not pre-empt a planning application for the site, she could see what the authority might say based on its policies.
She said eight sites had been identified by WSCC for waste, and Rock Common was not among them, having been dismissed as a possibility back in 2002.
The county's criteria for a landfill site looked closely at the impact on the environment and the impact on neighbouring communities.
"I am very encouraged with the policies that are in place at West Sussex County Council, and I hope that when the planning application is made by Veolia we will be supported by our county council, because we are right to object," she said.
Robin Milner-Gulland, also a member of the parish council, said: "This is not the first application for landfill that the Wiston Estate has made.
"It was said at the exhibition that the Wiston Estate supported the application – in fact it initiated it because it stands to make a lot of money. Veolia are only the intermediaries.
"Last time this happened was in the 1990s when an application was made to remove a hill at a site known as The Rough on Washington Common for landfill.
"We were sluggish at that time. The parish council discussed it and did not like it, but did not do a lot about it and at that time the focus really was on landfill and sites were being sought everywhere.
"The result was a hill was removed along with a lot of archaeology – a Bronze Age tool factory from which 50,000 flint fragments were removed.
"No amount of restoration and landscaping after the event can compensate for that. The cost to the landscape was enormous – irreparable."
Veolia Environmental Services said: "Although we were not at the meeting in Washington on Monday the concerns reported to us are similar to those discussed at the recent public exhibition and highlighted in the questionnaires that those attending were invited to complete.
"Our Environmental Statement will address all these issues."
"If planning consent is granted the Environment Agency will monitor our operations to ensure that they conform to the standards required of a modern and well managed landfill site."
For full story see West Sussex County Times 24 March 2006
