Viridor South London Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency to vary the current operational permit at their energy recovery facility at Beddington Lane, in Sutton.
The site has a two-stream energy recovery facility in operation and an adjacent waste transfer station. The operators applied for a permit variation last year to allow increased capacity of the energy recovery facility, along with other operational adjustments and the consolidation of two separate environmental permits.
Following its review of comments received from the public consultation in November-December 2022, the Environment Agency is minded to issue the permit variation. However, before making the final decision in whether to grant the permit or not, there will be one more round of public consultation.
If granted, the environmental permit variation will allow Viridor to:
- Increase the processing capacity of the energy recovery facility to 382,286 tonnes per annum. An increase of 34,864 tonnes;
- Update the status of all pre-operational and improvement conditions in the permit;
- Amend all of the emission point locations listed in the environmental permit for discharges to surface water and sewerage, for both the energy recovery facility and waste transfer station. Incorporate an additional emissions point for shredder emissions at the waste transfer station;
- Consolidate permits for the waste transfer station and the energy recovery facility into a single environmental permit;
- Include additional European Waste Catalogue (EWC) codes for the operation of the waste transfer station. These are for temporary storage and transfer only of hazardous and clinical wastes. These materials are not to be processed in the energy recovery facility.
N.B. EWC codes classify common types of waste and how they should be treated.
The Environment Agency is inviting views of the public and organisations on the proposed permit variation.
The consultation is open for 6-weeks, from Friday 21 July until Friday 1 September 2023.
