It’s interesting to see how much heat is being generated over the arrival of our new landmark fiery furnace at La Collette.

You’d be forgiven for viewing it all as an exercise in displacement activity — a bit like the guard dog, which, having been kicked by an intruder, runs round the corner and barks loudly.

It’s difficult to see how at this stage the juggernaut can be halted. I know many prospective States Members, and those seeking support for re-election poured scorn on the incinerator project during the hustings last year.

The popular applause they received may have curried favour at the ballot box, and I salute those who have been as good as their promise to attempt to subject it all to new scrutiny, but it’s difficult to believe that bluster and even well-argued rhetoric now will have any more success for the anti-burners than their predecessors. The point is, surely, it’s all too late.

Curiously, the serious guns were not trained on the target until the contracts had already been drawn up and the outgoing Transport Minister was filling his fountain pen for signing.

The redoubtable Dr van Steenis, whose statistics gave mighty pause for thought, didn’t arrive on the scene until last September. Although it is too easy to dismiss them as NIMBYs, those most easily convinced by the arguments against the new plant are the usual suspects in the ‘drop zone’.

Others, though, are still uneasy ab-out its potential health and environmental impact. But we did need a replacement for a facility slipping into terminal decline. There were powerful influences ranged against the refurbishment of Bellozanne, and La Collette was seen as the least worst-case solution.

After all, the area which once upon a time had offered a fashionable seaside aspect to St Helier had already been turned into an industrial tip, so what worse could become of it?

So charges that no one in their right mind would locate a potentially polluting and definitely controversial enterprise there failed to sway political expediency despite concerns about the proximity of a fuel farm, adjacent population density and prevailing wind direction.

I suppose if you’re going to need a big chimney, it’s a good — let’s say, convenient — idea to put all your smoke up one stack. Lest this sounds scary, the emissions from the incinerator will actually pass up newly refurbished flues separate from the power station exhaust.

The Island’s Chief Medical Officer, who after all breathes the same air as the rest of us, has given assurances that the emissions will meet all the current EU health standards. Isn’t it curious how when we want to use the EU to support an argument, we quote it, but when we don’t, we ignore it?

Furthermore, we’re told what comes out will be for the most part invisible so we won’t know it’s there.
And with the way this Island is hell-bent on poisoning itself with an over-indulgence in junk food, alcohol and other inhaled substances, the long-term effects of a centrally placed incinerator will be negligible.

So the site has been marked out. The green recyclers have been banished to — ironically — Bellozanne, and preparations for the big build are under way. And it will be big. At 37.5 metres high, its huge box-like shape will be a mere wheelie-bin short of the new Airport control tower. There will be significant traffic alterations in the surrounding area. Little has been made so far of the need to provide an emergency access road to the site as a result of the Buncefield explosion, which would have to be constructed along the existing La Collette promenade.

Bravely, the STING gang of Royal Square note-burners — wasn’t it once a criminal offence to deliberately deface her Royal currencyship? — have taken up the cudgels in the interests of financial scrutiny. It’s certainly not the fault of TTS that the pound has taken such a dive against the euro, so upping the cost of the French kit. But like London’s Olympic village, the bigger the build, the greater the cost overruns burn political fingers.

So we’re going to have to stump up considerably more than the budgeted £106m — and that’s already £40m more than the original estimates quoted during the first round of public consultations in 2007. But the excitement of the four sleuthing musketeers has been heightened by their discovery that since 2005, £4m has been earned in consultancy fees by a group well-known for its expertise in recommending incinerator projects.

There’s no point in rehearsing all the old criticisms that the consultants’ remit was too limited, and their dismissal of new arguably ‘greener’ and smaller processes and plants was both precipitate and politically motivated.

The fact is, we cannot procrastinate while Bellozanne crumbles and its replacement grows daily more expensive. There will always be fundamental questions over the wisdom of adopting an incinerator solution to the Island’s waste, and certainly the location of the plant. But let’s get the thing working before it bankrupts us all.

At least there’s the possibility of a modest pay-back in terms of electricity produced from the tons of rubbish we so casually toss away. As with all industrial plants, the new plant will have a finite shelf-life. Perhaps we should even now start thinking of our needs 20 years on, so that instead of seeing a similar sorry saga of decay which brought Bellozanne to its knees, we might plan in advance for ‘son of La Collette’ to be prepared in a place where the winds blow offshore. It will give aspiring politicians plenty of time to ensure that they have moved house to the opposite side of Jersey!