Town Council backing for waste digester

8:00am Monday 20th October 2008

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BISHOP'S Castle Town Council has put its backing behind an idea to build an anaerobic digester for the local community.

In her presentation to the council on October 7 Kate Evans, a director of the Wasteless Society, described how a locally run digester could give Bishop’s Castle its own source of energy.

“Bishop’s Castle is extremely dependent on oil and electricity for our domestic, agricultural and commercial needs,”

she said. “Prices are soaring and we need to look hard at local energy use and production. I propose the formation of a Bishop’s Castle energy group or company to represent local interests in the setting up of a community-owned anaerobic digester on the edge of the town.

This would process sewage, farm slurry, food and garden waste and would produce methane to make electricity, liquid fertiliser and a solid soil conditioner for farmers to use as a nitrate free fertiliser.

” Mrs Evans added that the Wasteless Society had recently invited James Murcott to talk about the subject.

He was a pioneer of anaerobic digester design and helped set up the innovative Farm Gas company in Bishop’s Castle in the early 1990s.

She told councillors that Mr Murcott’s talk had been received with enthusiasm and with six digesters already up and running in the area, there is considerable local expertise.

Kate Evans stressed that any plan would have to be completely open to public scrutiny and she contrasted this with the difficulty in finding out details of the Bishop’s Castle biomass power plant, proposed for Crowgate.

She concluded: “I feel a communityowned anaerobic digester could be a real opportunity for us to build a genuine community enterprise, to create at least a proportion of our own energy in a sustainable and commercially viable fashion.”

Following the presentation councillors discussed the digester idea and councillor Jock Wright said: “I think we should look at the scheme in a positive light.”

The mayor, councillor Jim Gaffney, added that after attending a conference in Llangollen he knew of other communities who were looking at similar energy schemes.

Sounding a note of caution, Councillor Jane Carroll said she felt the scheme would have “a mountain to climb” in relation to the problem of traffic noise and smells.

“I think it would be difficult to get the public on side,” she added.