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Despite thousands of protests from local residents and petitions appearing on every conceivable social media, Covanta Energy has had its application accepted for a Development Consent Order on its plans for a £350m resource recovery facility at Rookery South Pit near Stewartby, Bedfordshire, by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).
The application, which was submitted at the beginning of August, will now enter the ‘pre-examination’ and ‘examination’ phases of the IPC decision-making process. This allows the IPC, the general public and interested parties to scrutinise the application.
Covanta proposes to take 585,000 tonnes of household and business waste from the surrounding area and generate enough electricity to power 82,500 homes using an energy-from-waste (EfW) facility.
Managing director Malcolm Chilton said: “This is an important step forward in our proposals to build and operate a modern EfW facility and materials recovery facility on this site. [The RRF is] a positive step forward for the environment and a sustainable way for generating power.”