WITH the news today that as few as three deputies could determine the fate of the incinerator project by the way that they vote, it is clear that the outcome will be close.

In turn, that means many States members and thousands of islanders will be left dissatisfied. And if the Assembly effectively ratifies its decision to press ahead with the Suez proposal, a particularly vocal, well-organised and well-funded group of objectors will be looking to legal avenues and the deputies opposed to incineration to keep fighting to ensure the burner is never built.

Equally clear, from Suez’s letter on this page, is why the company will fight hard to build the plant. Get the go-ahead and that represents £21,260 a day leaving islanders’ back pockets and going straight to a French company for the next 25 years.

Why? Because of the volume of waste arising locally and the successive decisions by the States to insist on treating that refuse in a single stream to be dealt with via a single solution.

As Deputy Scott Ogier, who prompted the axing of the bigger Lurgi plant in 2004, argued here on Monday, the real failure has been in not driving down what’s known as residual waste and in changing the culture of the community to the extent that a huge incinerator is simply not needed.

If the same energy and expense had been devoted to that as has been spent on pursuing mass burn, it is clear that Guernsey would be today facing a very different States debate.

Former deputy and leading advocate John Langlois this week highlighted the fixed mindset that wanted incineration from day one and any problem with any alternative was used as a further reason for sticking with burning.

Yet had the island and the States adopted a starting point of minimising waste and tackled the inevitable problems as they arose, then Guernsey simply would not require a plant on the scale proposed by Public Services and Suez.

So is it too late, at this 11th hour, to change tack and tackle the root cause?

Sadly, yes.

Unless States members also have the resolve to adopt source separation and drive down the waste we all produce.