ANOTHER year, another waste disposal debate. I am not naive enough to think that anything I write here will influence many people. Most minds are already made up. Islanders either favour a particular solution or, at the very least, they know what they don’t want.

Still, it’s a columnist’s job to offer opinions, even when he may be spitting in the wind, and having lived through so many rubbish discussions in the States, I have a few insights to share.

* 1. It is a subject on which many people change their minds the more they grapple with it. Most – including me – start with an implacable opposition to all forms of incineration but end up coming to the reluctant conclusion that it is the least bad option for dealing with residual waste. I’ve seen a number of other green leaning deputies travel the same reluctant road. A few people travel down the opposite carriageway. I remember interviewing Conseiller Bob Chilcott for Radio Guernsey when he was enthusiastically announcing

A and F’s decision to opt for mass-burn incineration. These days he’s a strong opponent of that process. Of course, like me, he no longer has a position of responsibility and it’s so easy to know better from the outside.

* 2. Guernsey is most definitely not a suitable place to trial cutting-edge technology. As an isolated island, with only one disposal route, we need a tried and tested solution. If the States was a big city council choosing a new waste disposal option to put alongside its existing three landfill sites and two incinerators, then new technology would be very attractive. Teething problems? No sweat, the waste could be diverted to other facilities. In Guernsey, though, if the novel technology failed we would be deeply in the soup.

* 3. Most waste treatment systems produce some pollution. For some people this is a clinching argument against such disposal routes. However, in reality, human existence is an exercise in getting dangers in proportion and dealing with risk rationally. More and more people are refusing to do that on issues as diverse as vaccinations and mobile phone masts. They will also oppose even a minute level of discharge from a modern waste disposal plant. Our politicians must see passed these protests and live in the real world.

* 4. While a long-term export route to Jersey would be quite acceptable, if permitted under international conventions, a short-term one would be fraught with problems. It would be expensive because millions would have to be spent on a transfer station for just a few years. That facility would almost certainly be at Longue Hougue, which raises the question of where our new plant could be built when Jersey can no longer take our waste. Of course the cost in a few years might well be much higher anyway, if anybody still wanted to tender. That brings me to my next point.

* 5. If we keep going through tender processes and selecting preferred providers, only to change our mind when they don’t prove universally popular, we’ll soon lose all credibility as a client. That means few serious waste treatment companies will want to have anything to do with us in future. Why waste their precious time and money going around the mulberry bush of Guernsey’s waste disposal strategy? However, all the novel, unproven systems will still be interested because they are desperate for a test bed.

* 6. No one is going to provide a waste disposal process free of charge. There may well be no capital cost to the taxpayer but that is quite a different thing. Even the dreaded Lurgi plant could have been provided without any cost to the States. The capital could be raised privately and so long as the operator got a long-term contract to receive all of Guernsey’s residual waste, the plant could finance itself. That is not the same thing as being free.

* 7. Even if there were a genuinely free waste disposal system on offer, it shouldn’t be allowed to sterilise our only suitable site unless it’s 100% certain to work.

* 8. Land-filling Les Vardes would be madness for both environmental and long-term water security reasons.

* 9. There will always be wonderful new technology around the corner. There has been for the last 20 years.

* 10. Someone has to start to govern and make some real decisions soon. This farce is becoming damaging.

That will do. It may not change a single mind but you’ve got to try.