Plans for a huge waste plant at Pinkham Way are back. This time Barnet Council wants to relocate its Cricklewood Waste Transfer Station (WTS) to the Pinkham Way site, to make way for a housing development. Any plant handling black-bin waste can have major problems with odour and fly infestations. But they are also a major fire risk. Statistics show that between 2011 and 2013, there was a fire at a UK Waste Transfer Station almost every three days. The number of daily lorry movements is likely to approach that of the previous, abandoned waste plant proposal, on one of the most polluted and congested stretches of road in London. The Pinkham Way Alliance has further details on this latest turn of events.
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The latest consultation on the North London Waste Plan opens today (30th July 2015). Twelve large reports looking at resource and waste management in North London through to 2032.
Despite what many residents had come to believe, the nearby site at Pinkham Way is not “saved”. Instead it has been identified as one of the “most suitable, sustainable and deliverable locations in North London for new waste management facilities.”
It is also one which, according to the London Biodiversity Partnership, contains “a remarkable diversity of species” and includes a section of a UK Priority Habitat. More generally it is a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) Grade 1. As part of recent analysis a Reptile Survey identified a small breeding colony of slow-worms, a protected species, while an on-going survey identified a rich variety of spiders and beetles, some rare.
Much is written about the importance of green space and its protection in our crowded and climate-change threatened City, but perhaps the experience of Cecil the lion has finally highlighted that people really do care about the unjustified exploitation of our natural world. Potentially concreting over this green space when the case for this additional (waste) site appears flimsy may be thought of as a step too far.
Twelve detailed reports in all their complexity is more than most residents can be expected to absorb but the task will be undertaken by the Pinkham Way Alliance.
Well over one thousand residents added their signature to the last PWA input. You can have the chance to add yours to the final PWA submission once it is available and so provide better protection to this valuable piece of London’s Green Infrastructure. Simply register on the web site for newsletter updates.
www.pinkhamwayalliance.org/
Thanks Karl - this is very helpful.
Interestingly, through being involved in the Air Quality study, we've been introduced to research which measures the amount of pollution absorbed by trees and vegetation generally. Pinkham Way has some 1500 trees on it, which is c 4% of the total amount in Haringey, so we can perhaps estimate some of the A406 pollution is absorbed.
Going back to the Haringey Cabinet meeting on July 14th, the 200 or so PWA supporters who were there - and thanks so much for coming - witnessed what would have been from the Council's point of view an exercise in damage limitation.
Not one of the Cabinet members there uttered a single word in response to justified criticism of the Council's broken promises and of the soundness of its planning policy about Pinkham Way and the new North London Waste Plan.
What the Cabinet members didn't see was that the damage caused by this exhibition was much much greater than any that the Council managed to avoid by saying nothing. Supporters were outraged.
The corrosive drip-drip effect of five years of guillotining debate and ignoring inconvenient evidence in this way goes very deep indeed. Planning policy has been distorted as Haringey planning officers have spent five years and thousands of expensive hours trying to force this unsuitable site into waste use.
And it continues. The better atmosphere and much more pragmatic attitude from the Council that came with a change of planning officers has run into the sand, as the NLWA boot has pressed ever harder on to Haringey's throat, choking the Council's independence of thought and ability to act in its own interests.
In the old Soviet days this way of behaving was known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Pinkham Way Alliance has been approached by University College London’s social enterprise, Mapping for Change, to partner in a London-wide air quality study. As its part in the study, PWA will gather evidence about the deeply concerning levels of pollution in the residential areas around the A406 Pinkham Way, which includes the Pinkham Way nature conservation site.
The importance of the study is underlined by research published this month by the Mayor of London showing that, every year in London,9,500 early deaths are caused by air pollution — more than the number of deaths caused by smoking.
For the study, PWA has sited 25 diffusion tubes in residential areas adjoining the A406, both at Pinkham Way and Telford Way, and along the local roads which become clogged with the traffic trying to avoid A406 congestion. Results from the month-long study are due in September.