A strategy going to waste

AT THE risk of seeming obsessive, I'm focusing on Guernsey's waste strategy again today because it seems to be changing weekly.

That's worrying. It's vital that we have a robust, cost-effective system in place for getting rid of our rubbish. After all, it is our trash. We generate it as a community and we have a moral duty to deal with it properly, not like some impoverished country with no option but to create waste mountains on the edge of their cities.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that would ever happen here, but I am concerned that years of prevarication and constant mind-changing could leave our small island community painted into a corner. If that happens and we run out of good options for dealing with our waste, the States may have to sign a huge cheque to secure a way out.

Hopefully we'll never get into that position, but our government's chosen waste strategy is steeped in multiple risks. To work, it needs a large number of strands to all succeed at once, from reducing our waste to finding the right place to export it and from procuring on-island treatment facilities to building a transfer station to ship out our residual rubbish.

Not only do all these projects have to work, but they must do so at a cost which reflects the estimates given to deputies when they first backed this highly complex and therefore risky approach to waste disposal. That's not impossible, of course, and we must all hope it works out. But hoping is not the same thing as expecting and few seasoned gamblers would back a successful and cost-effective outcome. As all the delays, changes and setbacks pile up, sadly those odds are just getting longer and longer.

So where does the project stand now?

It's hard to be sure because some aspects are veiled by commercial confidentiality, but as far as I can tell it's something like this.

The new kerbside recycling scheme introduced at a cost of more than £1m. per year has helped increase recycling a little, but not by as much as hoped. Meanwhile, a visiting expert has warned it might be very difficult to increase our recycling rates much further. Remember, the 2012 waste strategy was predicated and costed on recycling rising steadily to 70% over the next few years.

The gate price we'll have to pay for an overseas incinerator to burn our residual waste may come down a little from the initial estimates. We'll only know for sure when we get firm bids, a process that seems to be taking forever. At the moment, it seems unlikely our rubbish will go to Jersey because they want to charge too much and hitherto have insisted we take back the ash.

Perhaps the greatest risk factor in an inherently risky strategy was always the uncertain cost of all the necessary on-island infrastructure. It rapidly became clear that the initial budgets used to persuade deputies to go down this path were pure moonshine. They quickly had to be revised massively upwards.

Now it seems that even those higher figures didn't come close to reflecting reality. As a result, the Public Services Department has been forced by escalating costs to make two really radical changes to the approved strategy.

Firstly, they've dropped plans for an in-vessel composter to treat food waste on-island.

Secondly, they've decided to swap from exporting our waste from St Sampson's Harbour to St Peter Port. What should we make of these two bombshells?

Let's start with abandoning plans for composting food waste in Guernsey.

It's highly likely the export of this waste stream will prove to be yet another extra cost to islanders. And if PSD could get the price of an in-vessel composter so badly wrong, it's hard to have any real confidence in their estimates for all the other required bits of kit, such as the transfer station.

Talking of which, the sudden change of plan to ship our rubbish out of St Peter Port instead of St Sampson's harbour is likely to raise a few eyebrows, to put it mildly. Have they consulted with all the interested parties? Despite assurances that after initial treatment the waste arriving at the White Rock will be relatively clean and odourless, many will worry about the possible impact on Guernsey's beautiful town and prime tourist asset.

Then there's the issue of waste lorries trundling along the east coast as the rubbish is transferred by road from Longue Hougue. Even PSD isn't claiming the idea of shipping waste out of St Peter Port harbour is ideal. Instead they say they're planning to do so because they've been advised it will be cheaper than using St Sampson's. Another casualty of bad budgeting?

Also, I can't help wondering why PSD were so silent over this highly controversial decision when they made their recent statement to the States over scrapping their plans for in-vessel composting. Were they worried about how deputies would react? They surely must have known at the time, but instead the news only appeared in the Press 10 days later – on Liberation Day, of all days. A good time to bury bad news?

It all represents risk piled upon risk, in stark contrast to the proven technology and firm price our government rejected when, by just one vote, they overturned their decision to buy an on-island waste disposal system from French firm Suez. I know that at the heart of that system was an incinerator, or waste-to-energy plant, which many islanders really didn't want to see. But as the plan's architect, Deputy Scott Ogier, pointed out vigorously at the time, it was far more than just an incinerator. Rather, it involved a series of processes to separate and treat our rubbish. Of course that was before he flipped, apparently giving in to vocal lobbying, and voted against his own proposals.

That decision not only cost the taxpayer millions in compensation but it also led us directly to the difficult position we find ourselves in now. Which in turn produces another risk – this time a political one. Deputy Ogier, now PSD minister, is still in charge of our waste disposal and, for the sake of his political future, he simply has to make the 2012 strategy work somehow.

Any rethink, any admission that the approach has become too expensive or even undeliverable, would represent a body blow for his reputation. So his personal strategy must be to plough on with the waste strategy regardless. That could lead to some dodgy decision-making and requires the rest of the States to be more than usually cynical over anything PSD recommends regarding the strategy – in particular, Treasury and Resources, Public Accounts and the Policy Council.

More fundamentally, at what stage do the States put their foot down and say that all these major alterations mean the waste strategy being pursued by PSD is no longer the same one as the Assembly approved in 2012?

If they are ever are going to do that then it certainly has to be very soon. We are rapidly reaching the point of no return.