Surrey County Council’s Planning and Regulatory Committee approved plans for the Anaerobic digester and wood chip plant to be located on the far end of the Trumps Farm site at its meeting in October 2011.
Nov 062011
Aug 282011
ANAEROBIC DIGESTER PLANT ON TRUMPS FARM, LONGCROSS
In September 2010 Agrivert Ltd. submitted a planning application to Surrey County Council (SCC) for an Anaerobic Digestion Facility (AD) on the land of Trumps Farm, Longcross Road. It is to be located to the east of the Wellers Auctioneers building and use the same entrance. AD involves biologically treating organic material to generate a renewable green energy for the National Grid. Originally the Society was in favour of this as, although in the Green Belt, it appeared that it would be taking RBC`s food waste from the new recycling contract, plus that from other local Boroughs. So local removal of one waste stream was more sustainable. Due to investigations by our SCC Councillor, Mel Few, it turned out to be mainly for commercial food waste being imported from long distances. It has no contracts with any local or county councils to take domestic waste, nor will it have. This will result in high numbers of lorries travelling longer distances over our local roads. Also, as the main financial incentive is the sale of the produced energy, there is a potential to extend the site on this location. Hence more buildings in our Green Belt and even more lorries! Therefore we consider that it should be built near to the source of the waste material on an industrial site. The Society has lodged an objection to RBC and SCC. RBC has also lodged a strong objection to SCC. As there have been alterations to the original plan, for example increasing the stack height from 8 m to 16 m and Agrivert have not provided enough information on the effects on the environment, SCC has asked for more details before they will consider the application.