Inquiry will look at fuel plant legalities

A public inquiry has been set for Tuesday, December 9, probably locally.

But the inspector conducting the inquiry will not be concerned with the issues which concern the public- noise, pollution and increased traffic - but with legalities and technicalities.

The hearing is likely to hinge on how heat will be generated to drive the turbines to produce electricity.

Campaigning East Bexhill county councillor Jean Hopkinson has teased-out the information via a series of probing e-mails about the Pebsham plant, currently the subject of a 3.m rebuild following last year's disastrous fire when 2,000 tonnes of unsold fuel pellets in storage caught light, sending a smoke cloud across the town.

She said: "The implications at the moment are that Reprotech is not happy with the county's decision not to issue a Certificate of Lawful Use to produce electricity at Pebsham.

"At the moment the Reprotech process uses gas to dry off 30 per cent of the moisture from waste in order to produce fuel pellets.

"This means that it is an end-user of gas - it does not produce gas. I think the county council's officers need to look at that.

"If you are an end-user you don't drive engines you are drying off wet material to produce pellets. But we are only getting 35,000 tonnes of pellets out of 75,000 tonnes of waste. The rest is going into landfill any way - at enormous cost."

Reprotech has always maintained that when it bought the Pebsham waste-derived fuel pellet plant from the county it bought with it permission to generate electricity from waste.

The resultant legal battle has dragged on for years and gone to the highest level.

Reprotech, in applying to the county for the Certificate of Lawful Use, sought the county's formal confirmation that planning permission was NOT required for the generation of electricity.