A HIGH Court judge has shattered the last hope of preventing a giant incinerator from being built in Bexley.

Mr Justice Sullivan signalled the defeat of a 16-year battle to stop the incinerator in the High Court last Friday, when he refused a request from Bexley Council and London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, for a judicial review of the project.

He dismissed the six grounds for a review put forward by Bexley and Mr Livingstone, saying he felt none of them had any reasonable prospect of success.

Riverside Resource Recovery Ltd (RRRL) has already begun work on the £200m project at its 22 hectare site on the riverfront off Norman Road, Belvedere.

It hopes the incinerator, which will burn an average 585,000 tonnes of rubbish a year and generate 72 megawatts of electricity, will be up and running by 2010.

The decision has been greeted with disappointment and resignation by the campaigners who have spent years fighting the project.

Many blamed Government pressure for the decision to give the incinerator the go-ahead after two public inquiries and concerted opposition from local people, MPs, London Assembly members and Bexley Council.

Ken Livingstone has branded the project "an obscenity".

Bexley Council leader Councillor Ian Clement expressed his bitter disappointment.

He said: "It was important and in the interests of the borough that we did all we could to try to stop this development, which I am still convinced will be bad for Bexley and for London.

"While our arguments received a proper airing, something which I felt they deserved at the very least, I am naturally extremely unhappy at the decision."

Bexley and District Against Incinerator Risks(BADAIR)

BADAIR chairman John Mankerty said he feared deals had been done in back rooms.

And this thought was echoed by another opponent Alec Tapper.

Mr Mankerty said he worried all the warnings opponents had made at the public inquiries about what could happen when the incinerator was in operation, would come to pass.

He said: "I think all the fears about things such as the eventual importing of foreign rubbish to feed the incinerator, will come to fruition.

"We will also have to go through the awful building phase."

He went on: "We have well and truly lost. The saving grace is that, without the local opposition, this could have been in operation 16 years ago, with much older technology.

"The only thing we can do now is to keep a close eye on what they are up to, and kick up a fuss every time the regulations are broken."

Mr Mankerty said it was unlikely BADAIR would agree to join a liaison committee proposed by the company and said it would continue to monitor the project, not just while it was being built, but when it starts to operate.

BADAIR activist John Livingston said the decision to give the go-ahead for the project had been undemocratic because Cory, the company behind RRL, had sidestepped the local planning process by calling the project an electricity generator.

As a result, the project did not go to Bexley Council via the usual planning application procedures, but was decided by the Department for Trade and Industry.

Mr Livingston said: "At the public inquiry all the evidence was about incineration. This is not a generator, it is an incinerator.

"I am gutted. Loads of people think this decision was ludicrous. but when you have the Government ganged up against you, what can you do?

He added: "It will generate only a very small amount of electricity and it will be dirty electricity because of its large carbon footprint, and all the heat it generates will be wasted because no one wants it."

Another long-time opponent of the incinerator project, Mr Tapper is convinced the fate of the project was already sealed before the public inquiry was even finished.

He claims a top level steering group of independent advisors was set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, just as the second public inquiry into the incinerator proposal got underway in July 2003.

It was tasked with "driving the delivery" of the Government's waste objectives, and included David Riddle, chief executive of Cory Environmental, the company behind the Belvedere incinerator.

Mr Tapper claims the group ran parallel to the public inquiry and stopped meeting when the inquiry finished. He says he suspects the group had the final say on the project.

He also lashed out at the Western Riverside Waste Authority which drove the demand for an incinerator in Bexley to burn its rubbish, accusing two of its members - Wandsworth and Kensington and Chelsea councils - of "lording it" over Bexley.

Mr Tapper said: "This whole process has been a huge waste of public money and Bexley should ask for the expense of this sham of a public inquiry, to be reimbursed by the Government."

LONDON MAYOR KEN LIVINGSTONE

Ken Livingstone who backed Bexley Council's opposition to the project and its fight to get a judicial review of the decision said he was disappointed at Mr Justice Sullivan's decision to reject the application for a judicial review.

He said: "This is a bad day for London's environment. It means hundreds of thousands of tonnes of London's rubbish, which could have been recycled or used to produce biofuels and hydrogen, will simply be burned.

"These kinds of incinerators will release as much carbon per unit of energy, as a coal fired power station. Given the scale of the challenge facing us on climate change, this incinerator is an obscenity."

JOHN AUSTIN MP

John Austin, who lives in Belvedere and whose Erith and Thamesmead constituency will house the incinerator, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the decision.

He said: "If the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, had been given responsibility for strategic waste management in London, we would not be getting this incinerator.

"Regrettably, Bexley and other London councils have opposed the Mayor having these powers and we will be landed with a decision taken by the Conservative-controlled Western Riverside Waste Authority."

DAVID EVENNET MP

Another long-time opponent David Evennett, Bexleyheath and Crayford MP said: "This decision is a real blow for the hard working campaigners who have been opposing this project for more than 15 years.

"it will have a serious impact on the quality of life of the residents of Belvedere and people of Bexley through increased traffic and pollution"

And he promised: "I shall continue to raise air quality concerns with the Government."

COUNCILLORS LEAF, FULLER AND FRANCIS

Belvedere Tory councillors David Leaf and John Fuller said they shared residents' disappointment, but have not yet entirely given up hope.

Cllr Fuller said: "No one locally wanted the incinerator to be built. We will now look again at the options available to fight it.

"The Government's decision to allow Britain's biggest waste incinerator to be built in Belvedere was an horrendous one, which will inflict misery and suffering onto residents in Belvedere and throughout Bexley. The Government has ignored us and let everyone down.

"This incinerator is bad for the environment, bad for Belvedere and bad for Bexley."

Belvedere's Labour councillor Daniel Francis has been involved the the campaign against the incinerator for a number of years.

He expressed his disappointment at the decision, and added: "I would like to pay tribute to those local campaigners, including John and Joanna Livingston, John and Julia Mankerty and Alec Tapper who have fought for the last 16 years to stop this development."

CORY ENVIRONMENTAL

THE driving force behind the plan has been London-based Cory Environmental, which was a subsidiary of multi-national company Exel, until Montagu Private Equity led a management buy-out in April 2005.

Cory, whose tug and barge fleet on the Thames transports nearly 20 per cent of London's rubbish, originally bought the Norman Road site and applied in 1991 to build a 1m tonne incinerator there, the largest in Europe.

Following a seven-week public inquiry in 1992, the proposal was refused by the Department for Trade and Industry in 1994.

In 1995, Cory teamed up with energy company PowerGen and made another application to build a giant incinerator on the site. The application drew one of the largest number of objections ever received by the DTI and PowerGen eventually pulled out of the project. The application was withdrawn in 1997.

In 1999 Cory joined forces with Energy Power Resources, a company specialising in renewable energy projects. They created Riverside Resource Recovery Ltd which lodged the latest, and ultimately successful, application.

Energy Power Resources was founded in 1994, largely with venture capital, and claims to be one of the UK's largest generator of renewable energy. In March 2005, it was bought by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund Renewable Energy Ltd part of the Australian Macquarie investment bank.