Les Vardes ‘can take inert waste then water’
INERT waste could be dumped at Les Vardes within a few months, and the quarry used at a later date for water storage, Ronez general manager Steve Roussel has said.
The company is already preparing to start blasting at its new site at Chouet, and extraction work at Les Vardes is due to stop in the next two to three months, after which there would be space for the waste if the States wished to use it, Mr Roussel said.
Up to one million tonnes could be dumped there over the next 10 years, by which time Ronez would have finished extracting all the stone reserves – currently under its processing plant – before leaving the site completely.
At that point the quarry could be filled with another 5m. tonnes of inert waste, or water, a move which some deputies prefer.
Disposal of inert waste is once again uncertain after the Development & Planning Authority this week rejected plans to create a temporary storage stockpile at Longue Hougue. The decision is to be appealed.
The option of using Les Vardes for inert material was discussed by the previous Policy & Resources Committee. Its former vice-president Mark Helyar said that a great deal of work had been done on the issue.
‘Ultimately Les Vardes is a strategic asset which the States will end up buying for water or waste,’ he said.
This should have already been done, he said, but P&R did not have the power to proceed.
‘We were already well into negotiations on price, staff reduction in waste and outsourcing this whole operation, at no net cost to the States.
‘STSB and E&I refused to countenance the option to dispose of inert waste in Les Vardes – which we could do for 30 years at no net change to our water storage – on spurious, unsubstantiated scaremongering grounds to do with water consumption and climate change.’
Deputy Helyar said that as far as he was aware he was the only States member with a first-class honours degree in climatology and he used to prepare the island’s water and consumption statistics.
‘The real intention of these committees has always been to plough on with the reclamation at Longue Hougue South, irrespective of the fact that Guernsey just cannot afford it,’ he said.
‘The last estimate was around £64m. – given the inaccuracy of forecasting it’s probably around £100m. now – and I would rather build schools than fill the sea in with waste at vast expense with money we don’t have.’
Rather than all-waste or all-water at Les Vardes, Mr Roussel said that a dual option could be chosen, where inert waste could be tipped for 10 years, after which the quarry could be used for additional water storage.
If the entire quarry was used for water it would hold more than 50% of Guernsey Water’s existing water storage capacity.
But even if this was preceded by inert waste being taken there for 10 years, until another site was found, it would only reduce Les Vardes’ water storage capacity by 10-15%.
After the DPA’s rejection of Guernsey Waste’s plans, STSB president Peter Roffey claimed that the former P&R had undermined States plans to use Longue Hougue South for inert waste ‘via secondary means’, when it refused to approve the funding needed by E&I for a planning inquiry.
Deputy Helyar said that STSB was not a policy-making body, ‘but this has been an exercise in policy-making and coercion by omission – refusing to countenance other much cheaper options because of longer term, undebated intentions to reclaim land’.
