A long-awaited planning application for the £60 million Battlefield incinerator will be submitted in the next couple of days with the promise of 21 jobs for the area.
The ‘state-of-the-art’ energy from waste facility will be built for Veolia Environmental Services next to Battlefield Household Recycling Centre on Vanguard Way, subject to planning permission.
The chimney will be 65 metres tall and waste will be burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The facility will also generate up to 8 megawatts of electricity – enough to power around 10,000 homes – from 90,000 tonnes of residential municipal waste produced per year.
The application will be available for viewing once submitted to Shropshire County Council.
A public exhibition is now on at the recycling centre from 3pm until 7pm and will continue on Saturday, January 17 at the Lantern on Meadow Farm Drive, from 9.30am to 1pm.
The project will generate jobs during construction and 21 more when the building is completed in 2013.
The company will also submit a separate application to the Environment Agency to operate the planned incinerator which must be approved before the facility can be opened.
The company was awarded a 27-year contract to deal with the county’s waste in October 2007 believed to be worth around £100 million.
County councillors are already committed to supporting the project under the terms of the county’s waste contract with Veolia.
But the plans have been met with anger by residents who have claimed the site would give off harmful emissions, and the Safe Waste in Shropshire campaign group was set up in 2007 to fight the project and promote alternatives.
Donald Macphail, managing director of Veolia in Shropshire, said: “The reality is that doing nothing is not an option. We can and must do more to minimise landfill.”
Mirian Walton, secretary for Safe Waste in Shropshire, said: “There are safer alternatives on a more human scale which are more cost effective and environmentally sustainable.”