MVV Energie is a German utility group, headquartered in Mannheim and 50% owned by Mannheim City Council. MVV’s core business comprises the distribution of energy, natural gas and water in Mannheim and other cities, the generation of Energy from Waste (EfW) and other energy projects. MVV Energie has a number of subsidiary companies:

• MVV Umwelt (MVV Environment) specialises in waste treatment and owns the EfW and biomass power plants in Germany.
• MVV Environment Ltd looks after the UK business of MVV Umwelt.
• MVV O&M employs the technical experts who design, build, operate and maintain MVV Umwelt’s plants.
• MVV Environment Devonport Ltd has been set up especially for the project with the South West Devon Waste Partnership (SWDWP).

MVV Energie employs more than 6,000 staff in Germany and abroad with an annual turnover of €3.4 billion (£3 billion) (financial year 2009/2010). The utility company is publicly listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange; its majority shareholder is the City of Mannheim.

MVV Umwelt has over 45 years' experience in building and operating EfW plants in Germany and is one of the top three companies in Germany in its field.

In Germany MVV operates six EfW and Biomass plants, treating 1.6 million tonnes of waste and biomass a year. MVV Umwelt currently works with 22 municipalities and districts in five federal states, managing and disposing of the waste of more than 4.4 million people across Germany.

MVV's EfW plants have Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and district heating schemes, so the company brings first-hand experience of operating high efficiency EfW facilities to the UK. MVV O&M is experienced in the fields of design, planning, construction and operation as well as the maintenance of power plants.

MVV, in Germany, operates contracts to process the Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) material in the same way as is proposed for the operation at Whitecleave Quarry.

With more than 45 years experience of operating EfW and biomass plants, MVV is committed to the highest levels of safety. Both MVV Umwelt and its subsidiary MVV O&M have been accredited to the standards of BS OHSAS 18001 (British Standard Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series). High levels of safety are also reflected in the fact that reportable work-related accidents (those which result in an employee being absent from work for at least three days) are well below the industry average. In Germany the average accident rate per 1,000 full-time employees between 2005 and 2010 was about 12.5 for MVV Umwelt and its subsidiaries, which was some 40% below the industry average of between 18.4 and 19.7. For further information click here.

MVV constantly reviews accidents or potentially dangerous situations in order to improve its safety record. MVV will apply the same high standards in the UK as it does in Germany.

Sam Gilpin Demolition Ltd is owned and run by Sam Gilpin; the company is part of Gilpin Group Ltd. Whitecleave Quarry Ltd, a sister company of Sam Gilpin Demolition Ltd (SGDL), is the company that will enter into a contract with MVV and will run the site. Sam Gilpin, who was born in Devon and has all his family ties there, has run his demolition business in Devon for over 25 years. The annual turnover for the company is £4million and it currently employs 35 people.

SGDL has experience in operating all the equipment used on site in the everyday running of the demolition business. The materials produced on the site are an extension of materials used every day on the demolition sites.

The company has an exemplary record and in twenty five years of trading has not received any improvement or prohibition notices or been prosecuted by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) or the Environment Agency (EA) for activities on any of its demolition sites.

SGDL is currently UKAS accredited to ISO9001 for its quality management system and is working towards ISO14001 and OHSAS18001.

MVV will have a contract with Whitecleave Quarry Ltd who will operate and maintain the IBA plant. MVV will have step-in rights if required. The IBA facility will be built by Kier, a local construction company with regional offices in Plymouth . MVV has already applied for planning permission, and will apply for an Environmental Permit, which is required before operations can start, in the summer of 2011.

No. Whitecleave Quarry Ltd will operate and maintain the IBA treatment plant under a contract with MVV. This will detail the standards and requirements to be met.

MVV is proposing to develop a recycling plant to process approximately 57,000 tonnes of IBA per year by sieving the material and extracting any metal, producing a secondary aggregate that can be used on construction projects in Devon and the South West generally. IBA is the ash that is left over after residual waste from South West Devon, including Buckfastleigh, has been burned in an Energy from Waste (EfW) Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant which MVV is proposing to develop at the Royal Naval Base at Devonport.

Whitecleave Quarry Ltd is also proposing to develop a materials recycling facility (MRF) at the quarry to process up to 25,000 tonnes per year of demolition waste from its demolition business.

In order to accommodate both facilities, the rock spur in the quarry, totalling some 300,000 tonnes, will have to be blasted and moved into the quarry void. There is an existing planning permission to continue quarrying on site until 2042. However, once the IBA plant is built Whitecleave Quarry Ltd is proposing that no further quarrying will take place.

An extensive site selection process was undertaken in 2010/2011 to identify suitable sites and discuss opportunities with landowners. The outcome of this was the identification of Whitecleave Quarry as a suitable site with a land owner and operator willing to discuss and take the project forward. Details can be found in the planning application in the Environmental Statement chapter 5.

The main criteria for the siting of the IBA treatment plant were good transport links and the potential to provide a solution for IBA treatment. After an extensive search involving reviewing around 25 sites, Whitecleave Quarry was considered to offer the best solution, because of:

• existing complementary business operations
• the good transport access and road connection from Plymouth
• the good location for reselling the recycled IBA
• the extensive site area with space to accommodate all needed equipment
• the quarry walls providing a natural screen from operations

Raw IBA will not be landfilled at the quarry as we will have to meet IBA recycling rates of at least 95% to meet planning conditions of the EfW facility in Plymouth. MVV have written to DCC to confirm this position. The capacity for storage of raw IBA is 7,500 tonnes, which is approximately 6 weeks worth of output from the EfW facility.

The planning application was submitted in July 2011. Due to a late request for further information the next available dates for the determination of the planning application by DCC is the 25th April 2012.
The IBA facility could be operational by summer 2014 and the MRF as soon as planning is given and the Environmental Permit is granted.

No. The IBA and MRF will apply to operate between the hours of 07.00 – 19.00 hrs Monday to Friday. Likely actual operational hours would be 08.00 – 17.30 hrs. The site will also be closed on bank holidays.

We anticipate that there will be an additional 12 jobs created, but we cannot guarantee that preference will be given to local candidates due to employment law. However, we would hope to draw on the available pool of local talent if they choose to apply for any advertised vacancies.

Once planning permission has been granted restricted blasting and associated quarrying activity will take place to extract the Dolerite to create within the quarry a level area of approximately 8,000m2 for the IBA processing. Blasting will take place in the allotted timescales between October to March 2011, then again from October to March 2012. That will cause minimum nuisance to residents, and no disturbance to summer tourists or protected wildlife. The rock will go into the existing void, to create a level plateau with the IBA facility. The Dolerite will be used at a later date depending on market demands.

The water run-off from the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) will be channelled into settlement ponds and then into the Dean Burn. This will be allowed through discharge consent at greenfield run-off rates and authorised and monitored by the EA.

Rain water from the IBA facility is managed in two ways; the run-off from the surrounding quarry sides will channelled into the Dean Burn via the site drainage system to the North of the site. The IBA surface water management will be channelled into a settlement lagoon. This lagoon will allow for control of surface water run-off to ensure the site will remain dry during a 1 in 30 year storm event. In addition to this the design of the IBA working concrete base plate would control water from a 1 in 100 year storm event by controlled flooding of the facility. To ensure the lagoon limits discharge to greenfield run-off rates the outflow will be controlled and the water will then flow into the site drainage system to the north of the site. The lagoon is designed to allow for control and settlement of surface water run-off and suspended solids and any contaminants.

In order to estimate potential impacts of climate change 10% has been added to rainfall intensities.

Currently there is discharge consent for the quarry for 45 litres per second with a limit of 3,888 m3 in any 24-hour period. Based on our calculations the site greenfield run-off rates would be at a maximum of 41l/s.

For more information, please see the detailed chapter on this in the Environmental Statement supporting the planning application.

The planning application anticipates up to 65,000 tonnes of IBA and 25,000 tonnes, annually, of demolition material for recycling. The amount of IBA could vary a little depending on the amount of waste that the EfW in Plymouth receives.

The development is not for asbestos disposal or treatment as this would be classed as a hazardous waste operation. Any asbestos-type material found in either the MRF or IBA materials would be quarantined and sent away for disposal at an authorised site. Gilpin will have conducted site audits on the demolition operations that require materials to be brought in for recycling and will require any companies bringing in recyclable demolition waste to have an audit trail.

There are two kinds of residues from incineration of municipal waste: Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) and fly ash (or Air Pollution Control Residues). Neither of these is classified as toxic. However, fly ash is classified as hazardous due to being alkaline and this will be disposed of at a specialist waste treatment site in Leeds, before being landfilled in a licensed hazardous waste facility in Lincolnshire. The fly ash will not be processed or stored at Whitecleave Quarry.

IBA is the left over material after all the combustibles have burnt out in the EfW process. It mainly consists of non-combustible material like metals, glass, ceramics and debris. It drops into a quenching bath and is then collected for further processing.

No, it is not even classed as hazardous.

There are two kinds of residues from incineration of municipal waste: Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) and fly ash (or Air Pollution Control Residues, APC for short). Neither of these is classified as toxic.

IBA is the left over non-hazardous material after all the combustibles have burnt out in the EfW process. It mainly consists of non-combustible material like metals, glass, rubble, ceramics and debris. It drops into a quenching bath (water) for cooling at the EfW facility and is then collected in a concrete bunker awaiting transport for further processing. The material is transported damp with 10-15% water content.

Fly ash is classified as hazardous due to being alkaline and this will be disposed of at a specialist waste treatment site in Leeds, before being landfilled in a licensed hazardous waste facility in Lincolnshire. The fly ash will not be brought to, processed or stored at Whitecleave Quarry.

The planning permission and environmental permit will only be to process non-hazardous waste; hazardous waste would have to be sent elsewhere to be treated.

The IBA processing operation does not involved the material being washed.
Examples of the IBA material and processed product are available to view at SGDL’s office in Buckfastleigh.

IBA will be transported in covered bulk HGVs from the EfW plant to the recycling plant. There, metals will be removed for recycling and the residues will be recycled for use as a secondary aggregate, for example in road building.

The average amount of IBA to be treated at the plant will be approximately 57,000 tonnes per annum.

The IBA treated in the facility at Whitecleave Quarry will come from the Energy from Waste (EfW) Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant which MVV is proposing to develop at the Royal Naval Base at Devonport.

Yes. The IBA is a residue from the incineration process and contains some ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Sorting and recycling these metals from the ash will be a key part of the treatment process. We estimate that there will be approximately 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of metal recycled every year which will count towards the UK’s recycling performance.

Traffic surveys were undertaken during February / March 2011. For a normal working day, the two-way flow on the A38 north of Dart Bridge junction amounted to an average of around 32,000 vehicles, of which around 10 per cent (3,373 vehicles) were HGVs.

When fully operational, the facilities at Whitecleave Quarry will add an average of 43 HGV round trips per working day to the traffic load.

The IBA will arrive in HGVs with an estimated payload of 20-25 tonnes per vehicle. The IBA is damp (about 10-15% water) as a result of quenching in the EfW facility and the lorries will be sheeted down. Vehicles leaving the site will pass through a wheel wash. This, combined with surfaced roads within the quarry site, will significantly reduce dust etc being carried onto the public highway.

With regard to IBA we have a set annual tonnage determined by the outputs from the EfW facility. This equates to an average of 13 vehicles a day (26 trips). The permutations are numerous but the likely scenario is 1-2 vehicles per hour. The actual number of vehicles per hour could be set by a planning condition or the by the transport company providing the service.

We have also given a transport scenario involving a demand over a 3-week period, based on an actual situation at another IBA facility, which indicates that there could be 100 vehicle movements in addition to the daily activity. This equates to about 30,000 tonnes being exported in that timescale. Based on the incoming IBA from the EfW this scenario could take place twice per year for IBA product. Predictions can only be made on a hypothetical scenario as we will not know for certain the exact market requirements in the future.

There are many IBA sites operating in the UK processing approximately 700,000tpa, some of which are in non-residential areas and some are near to housing. Examples are:

• Beely Woods in Sheffield, nearest housing 180m away
• Castle Bromwich, nearest housing 250m
• Ringwood, nearest housing 250m

There has been mention of the operation severing the town in two; the old A38 and new A38 may impact in this way already. The Quarry is to the SW of the town and on the other side of the A38 and does not split the village.

The site will be regulated and monitored by the Environment Agency under an Environmental Permit.

IBA is a residual product of the incineration process. It is an inert material with almost no organic content but when held close to the nose it has a faint odour. This means it cannot be smelt from a distance, and as the process involves storage, with the screening and sieving taking place within a building, there will be no odour problems. The MRF will process inert construction and demolition waste which has no associated odours.

The IBA storage and processing will take place on the quarry floor which is almost completely screened from views from residential properties in Buckfastleigh. The IBA plant and operational areas will be mostly screened by a rock outcrop and landscaping but there will be views into the actual quarry site from the A38, the high ground to the north and north east of Buckfastleigh and from a small number of properties around the entrance to the site. The building will be approximately 10m high and the IBA product storage piles will be approximately 8m high.

The MRF will be located to the east of the existing offices and will be screened by the trees lining the A38 and the shipping containers which are used for storage.

The void space is the area least visible; this is the existing void left by previous quarrying activities. This void will be filled by the removed Dolerite and by inert construction and demolition material such as subsoil. This area will be for the IBA product storage piles and will also be used for demolition material crushing operations and for blending of the IBA with rock and recycled aggregates as required.

The actual operation of the IBA facility will be within a building and additionally shielded from the surroundings by the quarry walls. Therefore, the noise level and the amount of dust outside the quarry will be insignificant. Similarly the MRF will be in a building above six concrete bays which are used for the storage of the recycled materials.