Badger activity is delaying work £7 million waste project as Highland Council casts around for long-term solutions to the costly problem of waste management
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The almost £7 million contract to construct a Waste Transfer Station at the Longman has been awarded and can now go ahead though there has been increased badger activity at the site.
A waste transfer station receives and sorts waste for onward shipment to end user destinations including a range of recyclable and biodegradable municipal waste from the Inverness area.
Surveys are taking underway to determine the extent of the badger activity and discussions are taking place with NatureScot to secure a protected species licence, exclusion zones and what work can progress on site.
But that all amounts to a potential delay to the programme from late 2022 completion to January 2023 completion though Highland Council will work with the contractor to ensure any delay is minimised.
The contract notice for a new waste transfer facility was sent to Public Contracts Scotland in July 2020 and is now live and open to the market for tenders.
Up to now about £790,000 has been spent on technical studies and preparatory fees. Similar waste transfer stations are planned for Aviemore while work is also ongoing in the hope of developing a similar facility in Fort William.
Mean while the council is casting around for long-term solutions to the multi-million pound problem of waste management as the costs mount not just getting rid of it but also of being taxed for landfill.
Last year the local authority sent approximately 74,500 tonnes of residual waste to landfill – the second highest in Scotland – which cost £6.2 million on four contracts, including £3.8 million to landfill tax.
Disposal costs at landfill sites at Seater in Caithness and Granish near Aviemore was £4.5 million and £3.7 million went on landfill tax and disposing of recycled waste totalled £2.7 million through 18 contracts.
All that comes to almost £21 million with an around £400,000 expected to be added to that this year through increases in the anticipated landfill tax and waste contract increases and £20,000 more for the lease of the Seater landfill access road.
But a number of issues are causing the local authority a headache as it tries to settle on a long-term policy, including time pressures with the Scottish Government’s looming 2025 landfill ban and the amount of waste per household.
For years, the possibility of creating an Energy from Waste facility on the Longman which might be able to handle the majority of the annual waste while producing energy and reducing the carbon footprint is a hugely complicated project.
Not only is it estimated to cost between £95 million and £185 million depending on the size and capacity of the facility but there is no guarantee that it would deliver what the council needs and it would not be built before 2027 at the earliest.
That means the council could crippling charges for two years after the ban comes into force while there are real concerns that if such an investment was made whether the right scheme could be put in place to make it financially viable.
But reducing waste is easier said than done with long-term solutions explored in four separate studies, with the final socio-economic study reporting to the member waste strategy working group at the end of April.
It highlighted that the need to consider costs must be placed alongside other factors such as the council’s programme and wider community impact.
The report also proposed a framework for understanding the pros and cons of the options which will help to appraise the options, including studying one or two operating Energy-from-Waste plants in Tayside and Lothian.
The issue remains pressing not just financially but also environmentally as landfill creates 297,808 tonnes of CO2 emissions and places the council as the fifth highest for carbon impact per person, with 1.26 tonnes of CO2 emitted per person, according to SEPA.
