NEWS that a consortium has been formed to promote and, if necessary, finance and build a Guernsey waste park that would deal with all refuse as well the island’s sewage inevitably draws the focus on to the process by which any preferred solution will be reached.

The brutal truth is that this community is in a  mess when it comes to finding a way ahead and the time it has available depends on the stomach – literally, given the current smell – islanders have for creating a rubbish mountain at Mont Cuet and/or exporting to Jersey.

What the years and tens of millions of pounds that have been expended to date have revealed is what the island does not want, in effect mass burn incineration, a bit of what it does want, rather more recycling, and no agreement on what happens to what’s left after recycling.

There is a real concern in some political circles that the massive consultation process Public Services is embarking upon is something of a sales pitch, a search for a lowest common denominator solution that might not be the best available but is the one that will offend the fewest number of people.

After all, PSD cannot afford – and neither can the island – to have another proposal thrown back with the clear instruction, go and do better.

These anxieties are not helped by the department’s decision to adopt a BPEO approach, one designed to establish the best practicable environmental option, a 10-step process designed to deliver the right solution in a semi-scientific way.

Those opposed to the method, which entails a systematic and balanced assessment of options, in order to identify which one provides the maximum environmental, economic and social benefits, as well as meeting legislative and practicability constraints, to quote the literature, believe it is a further hard-sell approach.

Whatever emerges at the end virtually has to be accepted.

Whether that’s correct or not, PSD does have a huge task convincing islanders that whatever it comes up with is the right solution – and yet again, what it rejects along the way will be very revealing.