From Pete Double.
PLEASE tell me that Save Our Shoreline (JEP, 16 December) is wrong! Surely our government would not choose to ignore Jersey’s international obligations by failing to inform Ramsar that it planned to build a multi-storey incinerator at La Collette, yards away from a wetland site of international importance!

I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding. There must be correspondence from the Planning department or Transport and Technical Services asking Ramsar’s advice regarding an independent Environmental Impact Assessment before the project began. After all, it’s what Jersey agreed to do when the south-east coast was designated a Ramsar site by signing the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance.

I think, in part, my misgivings stem from the response made by Planning and Environment chief officer, Andrew Scate. In his response to Save Our Shoreline’s report, he failed to address the points made by SOS. He stated, for example, that ‘It is not considered that the proposal will adversely affect the Ramsar designation. Relevant Jersey consultations were carried out with ecology interests to support this view.’

When did these consultations take place and where does this advice come from? Who considered that the project was safe and on what scientific footing is the statement based? It is vital to know this because politicians, including ministers, make their own judgments based on such advice and information.

If our government ministers have been taking advice from a local source rather than an international organisation responsible for such areas as the Great Barrier Reef and the Okavango wetlands, there must have been strong evidence supporting a locally compiled EIA suggesting that the proposed incinerator site is unquestionably safe. That scientific study should be made public in order to put all our minds at rest.

Chief officer Scate also states that in the Environmental Statement on the Plant there is reference to ‘ensuring that pollutants do not enter the Ramsar site’. As this is fundamental to the siting of the incinerator, can we assume that this is an absolute guarantee by our government, based on advice from the company that builds the incinerator, the Planning department and Transport and Technical Services that no fallout pollution whatsoever will enter the Ramsar site?

I am sure that SOS spokesman Dave Cabeldu is under no illusion here. The incinerator will go ahead. There are probably great lumps of it already sitting on some French dockside awaiting shipment as I write.
It seems that both government and community have been somewhat misled during this incinerator debate.

Certainly, if SOS is right, our international treaty obligations have been ignored and it looks likely that all the assurances concerning the environmental safety of the incinerator come from the company who is selling it to us.
The Old Coach House,
Oxenford Close,
St Lawrence.