BALI Chairman Newsletter - March 2009 (1)

For me, these past six months as Chairman of BALI have been busy, yet the ordinary Bexhillian could be forgiven for thinking that not much has happened regarding the proposed landfill at Ibstock's Ashdown Brickworks. This is implied because nothing much has been "in the news".
One should remember at these times, and I am always conscious of, the facts that simply don't go away. These are as follows:

1. the Ashdown quarries are large holes in the ground; there are very few of those in East Sussex. They are of huge commercial value.
2. The tendency has been, and still largely is, to use such holes for the landfilling of waste. (Those not so used are Eden-project type exceptions, often because they are 'wrong' for such uses, being chalk pits and / or with risk to ground water.
3. Ibstock is a company which has tended to use its excavated quarries mostly for landfill. It's probably the best and easiest way to bring profit to their shareholders.
4. Landfill in East Sussex is fast running out, with its only two sites left, Beddingham and Pebsham, which are shortly to close.
5. Recycling locally has been greatly increased but 60% of East Sussex waste is still disposed of by landfill.
6. The incinerator at Newhaven will probably not be able to cope with all of East Sussex's waste and certainly not if London waste is sent here as is envisaged in the South East Plan.
7. (Probably most importantly) The Ashdown site has been allocated for the landfilling of waste in the ESCC Waste Local Plan. It is the only such site allocated for landfill in East Sussex.

Ashdown Brickworks site pitcured left:
top) looking west and
below) looking east.

Since the ESCC Waste Local Plan allocated Ashdown for landfill in a sense we have been lucky. Firstly, that the proposal to use Ashdown for landfill hit the time of the 'green revolution' where landfill started to be and is increasingly regarded as the least acceptable way of disposing of waste, largely because of its methane emissions. So there has been a great emphasis both on recycling, which has increased greatly, and on incineration and other means of waste disposal.

Secondly, almost as soon as the Waste Local Plan was passed in February 2006 it became outmoded and work began on a new 'Waste and Minerals Development Framework' for East Sussex, allowing a renewed consideration of the disposal of waste in the county and a fresh selection of suitable sites - though not entirely fresh, as I have recently found out. This process has ground on for several years now and is still incomplete.
Finally, the Link Road has taken much more time than expected to be approved and is, even as I write, still not 100% certain to be built. The biggest disadvantage of the Ashdown Site, as recognised by the Waste Local Plan Inspector, was/ is the transport access and there have not been the developments in the transport infrastructure that were envisaged as necessary at the time of the Waste Local Plan.
But things being slow, or us being so far lucky, does not mean that the prospect of an Ashdown landfill has receded one iota and many times over the past six months I have been reminded that a landfill at Ashdown is still very much in the minds of those who have the power to effect it.