MORE than 20 prominent islanders have today taken a full page in the Guernsey Press to urge States members to support a move by Deputy Dave Jones to have alternatives to the mass burn incinerator examined in detail rather than this week approve the proposals from Public Services.

They have done so because they judge public opinion is more in favour of rejecting the PSD/Suez £93.5m. waste solution and instead going for the more flexible, adaptable and cheaper options that are said to exist.

That, a 3,000-signature petition and a weekend protest march plus many letters published here all bear testament to the deep anxieties felt by islanders about the project’s size and cost – and because it will commit the island for at least a generation to come.

Given the opposition, it would be tempting for Public Services not to resist the call for more checking. After all, the sursis from Deputy Jones would not reject the Suez proposal and pausing for a few months would at least prove that there was no rational alternative to its proposals.

There are, however, two problems with that approach. Any delay at this late stage would be seen by Suez as a breach of faith and would raise contractual issues. If it has to hang around while the States of Guernsey belatedly decides to remain with the French company, what’s to say the price won’t have gone up, possibly substantially, in what is a sellers’ market? More problematically, the message a delay would send out about the viability of Guernsey as a customer would be disastrous, particularly at a time when desperately needed airport runway repairs have to go out to tender.

The second point is that the alternatives are based on micro-burners but there is little evidence that they actually work with municipal waste, the very stuff this island needs to get rid of.

The clincher is the silence coming from Envikraft, the Danish incinerator manufacturer, whose micro-burners are at the heart of the alternative proposals.

Yes, we all want something smaller, greener and cheaper but the company with most to gain from saying, ‘we can do that for you…’ hasn’t.

That, surely, speaks volumes.