8 June - The Riverside Energy Park
Bexley Labour Group has been busy producing Press Releases this week. First
revealing that the Conservatives had
not bothered to attend
any of London Councils’ Transport and Environment Committee meetings over the
past year, then arguing that Bexley’s installation of
electric car charging points is going to annoy a lot of people because too
high a proportion of car parking spaces will be lost from small shopping areas. (†)
Then yesterday
they issued one about the plans to
massively expand the Cory incinerator in Belvedere. Cory Environmental
made a presentation to Bexley Council
last October but didn’t bother to hand out copies to the handful of members of the public in attendance so they have
only themselves to blame if their case cannot be made more enthusiastically here.
Things in favour of it are 900,000 megawatts of ‘free’ electricity. Cheap district heating and 655,000
tonnes of rubbish that does not go into landfill.
The other side of the equation is that a quarter of those 655,000 tonnes will
arrive by road, it will do nothing to improve air quality and it is right next
door to a nature reserve. Three MPs have submitted their concerns to various hearings.
The Government Inspector’s web page is here.
† I am a member of a few electric vehicle owners’
discussion forums. I mentioned Bexley’s plans for 13 dual headed trickle
chargers and the consequent loss of parking spaces on one of those forums. The unanimous verdict was that the loss
of a high proportion of parking spaces does indeed outweigh the small advantage of a couple of not
very useful charging points.