This Land is Your Land MARTYN JOSEPH PATRICK JONES

Martyn Joseph performas This Land Is Your Land in support of the Lower Sirhowy Valley.

Campaigners say they will continue to oppose a waste processing plant that is currently under construction despite a legal challenge having been rejected.

Poet and playwright Patrick Jones has adapted the words of the American folk song This Land Is Your Land for a special recording by singer Martyn Joseph. A video has also been made to highlight the campaign, fought by the Lower Sirhowy Valley Residents Group for more than six years, against the plant at an industrial estate in Cwmfelinfach.

Last month, local resident Dr David Platt had sought to take Caerphilly Borough Council to Judicial Review – to challenge the planning permission given in 2015 for the plant at the Nine Mile Point Industrial Estate – but a judge didn’t allow the application to go forward saying it was out of time.

The council has said it has instructed senior officers, who were independent of the decision making process, to conduct an investigation of concerns raised in line with its complaints procedure.

The dispute centres on how the original planning application was handled as the applicant, a firm called Hazrem Environmental Limited, wasn’t required, by the council, to provide an Environmental Impact Assessment with the planning application.

The firm was granted planning permission for a site that it said could handle up to 100,000 tonnes of waste annually, including sorting and processing for recycling and fuel production, while also burning natural gas in an on-site drier, which would emit nitrogen dioxide.

Dr Platt, who has spent thousands of pounds bringing the action, said other avenues to challenge the operation of the plant are being considered: “One is the human rights act as allowing something to go ahead that has not been shown to be safe could be against the right to life.

Link to full newspaper piece www.thenational.wales/environment/19644537.martyn-joseph-sings-protest-song-sirhowy-waste-plant/?ref=rss