ENVIRONMENTAL campaigner David Levy has called for a public debate to be held with those responsible for a new £15 million waste treatment plant in Westbury.

Wiltshire County Council’s regulatory committee approved plans for the mechanical biological treatment plant on the Northacre Industrial Estate on Wednesday last week.

The plant, which will remove more than 45,000 tonnes of west Wiltshire rubbish from landfill every year and will include a £1 million household recycling centre, has been opposed by Mr Levy, who chairs the campaign group The Air We Breathe.

He said: “I spent about two years of my life attending the Wiltshire waste forum. We helped Wiltshire County Council come up with its waste strategy and waste hierarchy for Wiltshire only to have Councillor Toby Sturgis and Andy Conn (waste services manager) to come up with options that we hadn’t selected.

“They decided to send Wiltshire’s waste to Slough (from the waste transfer centre at Thorny Down near Salisbury) and for an MBT plant at Lafarge after a trial there.

“I wanted more source separation, which would mean the council could then recycle most of the products that the public had already separated themselves, but they decided to incinerate it in Slough.

“The ash from the incineration process will then have to be transported to Gloucestershire – now that doesn’t sound to me like value for money for the people of Wiltshire. I challenge Toby Sturgis and Andy Conn to a debate on the issue.”

Residents are also concerned about the plant, which they think will create more traffic and pollution.

Mum Jude Lamb, who lives in Storridge Road, near the Northacre Industrial Estate, said: “We’re not happy about it because we don’t know how the traffic on our road will cope, let alone on Station Road, which is usually a traffic problem.

“I’m all for a recycling centre but why couldn’t the council build it on the West Wilts Trading Estate further away from residents?”

Hills Group, which is the county’s waste and recycling contractor, said the plant will create about 16 jobs and construction is likely to start in autumn this year.

The MBT plant was going to turn much of the county's rubbish into fuel for Lafarge cement works in Westbury, but the factory is due to be mothballed in April, so waste chiefs will have to come up with a new strategy before it opens in 2011.