Anyone live near a waste incinerator?

[jessicama]

After a long search, I thought we'd found our new home... but I've just discovered a household waste insinerator is due to be built a couple of miles away, and now I'm worrying about air quality, extra traffic, nasty smells and the potential impact it could have on house prices in the future!

Does/has anyone lived close to one? How did you find it?

"A couple of miles away" is too vague. Will hgv traffic affect the property, is there already a waste site there, which direction is the prevailing wind?

I live under two miles from two. We can occasionally smell them, but no other issues

Ah - did a module on those not so long back for uni. The technology that goes into making sure the air coming out is as clean as possible is nothing short of fascinating.

That doesn’t stop it being a bit taboo though, like nuclear, generally people don’t understand so try and stay away.

@LIZS No we shouldn't get traffic past our house, but it could clog up some of the bigger roads I guess. The house is to the west of the site - not yet operating

@54321nought that's encouraging to hear!

@FTEngineerM Interesting and reassuring! Although i've read that us coming out of the EU might impact what the government set out as "safe" levels...

I really wouldn't worry about a couple of miles away. We have one about a mile from us and it's never been a problem. I really want to go and visit when they start up tours again

We live a couple of miles one. Has no impact on my life other than all the local people on fb moaning about it and taking a pic when it generates anything you can see in the air saying it's pumping pollution out etc etc. It's on a main road so I'm not sure how much traffic is affected on that road. Though before incinerator there was a landfill type place and there is also a water treatment plant that stinks to high heaven.

[quote jessicama]@FTEngineerM Interesting and reassuring! Although i've read that us coming out of the EU might impact what the government set out as "safe" levels...[/quote]
It would be unlikely we’d go backwards in that regard now, it would be like someone saying carbon dioxide is fine for the environment 😬.

I used to live near the South East London Combined Heat and Power Plant (incinerator). I never noticed it being a problem. My asthma was real bad, but that was just probably just a result of having grown up in London.

We don't live near an incinerator, but we do live near a landfill. In all honesty, you wouldn't know it was there - there's the odd whiff when weather conditions are off a particular type, but that's it.

I went to an open day at our local incinerator (Veolia) a few years ago. It's not on our side of town though so I don't know if it causes problems.
I do remember that they had two monitors on the chimney, instead of just the regulation single monitor. And the insects would fly in the expelled warm air which attracted birds.

Cam it's a good day out. We got tea and biscuits while the site manager talked us through what we would see and the dcs were allowed to control the giant grabbers and move waste to the incinerator.

Agree if it's newly built it will be specced to Best Available Technique and have high tech scrubbers in the chimney which will be a minimum height etc etc. Wouldn't be an issue to me and provides local valuable employment. There was one tried to be built near me, i was in support as the area needed a source of stable employment but the company didn't do enough to educate local population before planning and nimby fearful opposition stopped it. understandable but not well informed imo - older inconerators maybe, but new ones have very high standards to meet.

Great, thanks to everyone who has replied - I'm definitely feeling better about it!

You'd really hope they wouldn't stick something that was dangerous to health in a residential area. Will have to look out for open days once it's operating!