• BEYOND the immediate anxieties of how to deal with Covid-19 and its aftermath, concerns return from time to time to other, long-term problems, one of which is the plan by the North London Waste Authority to build a new factory in Enfield, for the waste from seven boroughs.

The NLWA website states: “The North London Heat and Power Project facility will replace a 50-year-old plant and be built using technology such as equipment for controlling nitrogen oxides, as well as using proven filters for capturing particulates, including ultrafine particles”.

I am informed by an executive highly experienced in waste disposal technology that : “Mass-burning of unsorted municipal solid waste (MSW) will have a very negative effect on the environment… Ash content will be high and up to 30 per cent which must be land-filled in prepared sites.

“When the PVC fraction held in waste stream is combusted, dioxin gases are released. The gases must be treated in scrubbers before release in high chimneys… the treatment of emission… costs an estimated 70 per cent of the total building costs of mass- burning plants. The main problem apart from planning permission is to obtain long-term contracts for the collection and disposal of MSW”.

The NLWA prospectus refers to controlling emission of nitrogen oxides but does not mention the problem of “scrubbing” the poisonous dioxin emitted by burning plastics; the disposal of the remnant of solid waste can include a component of raw material for further plastics manufacture and also an element for chicken feed.

There will also be a need for “a string of articulated lorries… to transport the 700,000 tons of MSW from the seven municipalities. Net result will be wear and tear on the public road system and increased level of CO2 emission”.

So there are a number of aspects of the plans which many residents of Camden, not to mention Enfield, will feel need expert clarification and agreement, before the next stages of the project are commissioned.

MALLORY WOBER, NW3