Llangollen & District Friends of the Earth | Cyfeillion y Ddaear Llangollen a'r Rhanbarth

Author: Warren

  • School closures and wind turbines

    School closures and wind turbines

    Schools hold small communities together, they give a village a focus point and allow parents to meet up and make friends. They allow children to get to know, and value their surroundings and the people who live within them. Strong communities promote positive, environmentally aware values.

    Denbighshire council are currently in the process of what they call, ‘modernisation’ of the county’s primary schools. Closures are amongst some of the council’s proposals. There are many reasons cited for closing small community schools; surplus places, difficultly recruiting headteachers and rising overheads. In the end it all comes down to a lack of funds. By closing Ysgol Llandrillo, Denbighshire council will make a revenue saving of approximately £31,000 per annum. They will also avoid the maintenance backlog of around £140,000.

    Between two of villages affected by the school closure, Cynwyd and Llandrillo, Scottish Power Renewables are proposing to build a wind farm. The Mynydd Mynyllod wind farm. The company promises to provide the local community with £2000 for every MW installed per annum. IF all 25 of the proposed turbines are installed, then this equates to an annual income of £150,000.

    There are concerns in the area about the visual and economic impact the wind farm could have. The money on offer by Scottish Power, the ‘community benefit’, is seen by those campaigning against the wind farm as being little more than a bribe. The money would be made available to a wide area surrounding the wind farm, and so directing the money towards education in Llandrillo would require cooperation from a number of local communities. The council would also need to find a way of making an alternative funding source fit the ‘Modernisation’ agenda imposed upon them by the Welsh Government.

    Wind farm money could present an opportunity for this area. However there are lots of differing interests within the area. If anything positive is to come out of the changes currently being proposed, both to eductation and landscape, then it is community cooperation that will be the key.

  • North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project

    Below is the briefing that FoE groups have sent out to the councils involved in the “North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project”

    It sets out a very clear case against the building of an energy from waste incinerator, and also highlights some of the alternatives – more details are available on the alternatives should anyone wish to see them.

    North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project
    Summary briefing for Councillors, May 2011

    Three waste management companies (Sita UK, Veolia ES Aurora and Wheelabrator Technologies) have now been shortlisted for the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project (NWRWTP), which seems certain to be an energy from waste incinerator. The cost will be a staggering £600-800 million over 25 years. Friends of the Earth has previously raised concerns over this project that still have not been adequately addressed. We wish to summarise these concerns once again for all AMs and councillors (for the complete version of our comments, please email rick.mills@btinternet.com .

     • The planned NWRWTP capacity is 150,000 tonnes per annum, which is far above the tonnage of residual waste that will be available if the Welsh Assembly’s waste minimisation targets are met.

    • Contracts for large-scale projects like the NWRWTP involve guaranteed tonnages with penalty clauses. If, as we firmly predict, there is not enough residual waste available to meet the guarantees, the result will be penalty payments or burning of resources that could have been recycled. Furthermore, there will be a threat of having to import waste to the incinerator from England.

    • As a result of the guaranteed tonnages, incineration depresses recycling rates.

    • The Welsh Assembly targets for recycling and waste minimisation are achievable. Some parts of the world currently exceed the 70% recycling target for 2025, and South Somerset has already almost met the Assembly’s 2025 waste minimisation target. With improved technologies and packaging, a recycling rate of 85% should become achievable in the relatively near future.

    • It has been claimed we need projects like the NWRWTP to avoid EU fines for sending waste to landfill. In fact such fines will only apply to biodegradable waste, and there is no imminent threat of exceeding landfill allowances.

    • Against a background of rising commodity and oil prices, it makes no sense to burn resources that could be recycled or re-used.

    • Incinerators create potentially harmful emissions and leave a hazardous byproduct in the fly ash that remains.

    • There are smaller scale, more flexible, cheaper solutions for dealing with residual waste that would also be a very significant source of job creation. Small mechanical and biological treatment (MBT) plants could be used to treat the reducing volume of residual waste and render it inert and ready for landfill.

    • Incineration releases greenhouse gases.

    We hope that you will be opposing the NWRWTP and opting for simple and safe solutions that will save taxpayers money and benefit the environment.

  • Film show success

    Film show success

    Last night saw Llangollen’s first showing of the Leonardo DiCaprio Film, “The 11th Hour”. Llangollen FoE organised a showing of the climate change film as a trial run for a series of environmental film showings.

    Everyone who attended enjoyed the evening, commented on the excellent venue and thought that a series of publicly advertised showings would be worthwhile. The plan for these showings will be discussed at our next meeting (02/06/2011).

    Thanks again to everyone who came along and thanks also to those who helped organise the event.

  • No to incineration – Please sign our online petition

    We call upon the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh Government to revise its planning policy and policy on residual waste to provide a presumption against the building of incinerators, which send most of the carbon from waste into the air as CO2, emit ultra-fine particles that can be damaging to health, and create toxic ash. We believe that incineration is bad for the environment and bad for people.

    The petition can be found here; http://www.assemblywales.org/gethome/e-petitions/epetition-list-of-signatories.htm?pet_id=578

  • FoE Meeting – Wynnstay Arms, Llangollen

  • Assembly Elections 2011 – Questionnaire results

    At the beginning of April we sent out an environmentally themed questionnaire to the local candidates running for election to the Assembly on May 5th.

    We now have the responses from that questionnaire! Click here to see the responses.

    For those who haven’t seen the original questionnaire, you can see it here.

  • Bikes on Buses

    Bikes on Buses

    The Assembly government has recently announced that the Wales wide TrawsCambria bus network through Wales is to receive £2.2m to fund new buses. The X94 Wrexham-Barmouth bus service, which passes through Llangollen, is part of TrawsCambria network.

    Public transport systems work best when they are integrated. By integrating bicycles with buses you greatly increase the flexibility of bus services. People can ride a short distance to their local bus stop, use the bus to cover the majority of their journey and then finish off the last few miles by bike.

    The current fleet of buses which serve the X94 route are fitted with bike racks. This is a great idea, especially for the X94 which serves a number of tourist towns.

    In reality there are some problems. The main problem is that passengers are not able to actually use the racks! I have been informed by several different drivers on the route that I couldn’t use their rack because it wasn’t working; in fact one driver said that the bike racks have actually never worked.

    Let’s hope that the new buses bought with the £2.2 million investment of public money include provisions for carrying bikes that actually work. I have contacted the assembly government regarding this and am currently awaiting their response.

  • Panorama climate change walk

    Panorama climate change walk

    I am belatedly posting these photos from November. Thanks to Adrian for the photos.

    These photos were taken on our Climate walk. As we walked through the bitter cold and stunning scenery we discussed various aspects of climate change, the environment and possible future campaigns.

    We were also treated to a fascinating talk about the prehistoric history of the valley from Adrian a local geologist. A great day out, thanks to Mike for organising it all!

    [slickr-flickr tag=”panorama” items=”16″ type=”gallery”]

  • Llangollen FoE Poster

    Llangollen FoE Poster

    If you have been into town recently, maybe you spotted one of our new posters. If you did you were lucky as so far there are only four posters in the whole town!

    Help us recruit new members by improving our poster coverage. Either request a poster from Warren or print your own copy, then simply put it up on a noticeboard of your choosing. A quick, simple and hopefully effective action. Thank you!

    Click here to download a printable version of the poster.

  • Lighter later

    Lighter later

    What a difference an hour makes! Did anyone else feel the benefit of retrieving our stolen hour? An extra hour makes doing all those little jobs outside so much more possible. Shifting the clocks forward by one hour throughout the year has multiple benefits, for us humans and for the environment. To find out more click here: http://www.lighterlater.org/