INCINERATOR NOVEL FORETELLS LIFE

A public meeting is held in Derry Londonderry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), on the topic of waste management and the various approaches taken to it across the world. This is hot because of the concerns of citizens at the prospect of a large-scale gasification plant which will take in waste products, convert them to gas and incinerate that gas, with waste sent out a chimney stack and into an ash pit.

There was a similar plan in the early nineties, by industrial giant Du Pont, to build a waste incinerator and bring waste from many regions. Health concerns were raised by the plan. Public meetings took place. Public representatives wrestled with the challenge of waste management. A successful, citizen-led campaign of opposition caused Du Pont to withdraw their plans.

The notion developed in me that I was of this place and that I would take charge and do something about it. That this was my city as much as anybody else’s and that I was going to let my voice be heard, now and into the future. I was going to make a difference. It was up to me. The city – Derry - was up to me.

There were public representatives in attendance at the recent meeting. Eventually their experts will have to make recommendations to relevant committees and to the full City Council.

Sometimes I wonder at the timing of events. I wonder if there’s a big clock out there turning and ticking away and that events occur when the time is right, even when we don’t know it. I feel this about the job. I was at a meeting today, after speaking to Tony. The full department. A major review of the council waste management policy is to be launched. Everything from wheelie bins to toxic emissions and pipes spewing effluent into the river. The whole grubby underbelly of the city’s life. And I sat there and made my contributions. Spoke my piece confidently. One of only two women at the meeting. People listening to me, making notes on the pages I’d circulated. Asking me questions.

The public meeting was informative and challenging. There was good evidence from international speakers, in the room courtesy of the everyday magic of Skype. They spoke of waste reduction and job creation successes in San Francisco, Italy and in Wales, Scotland and Magherafelt. A City Council worker spoke from the floor and described a new recovery facility, which created 4 new jobs and a welcome service.

I wasn't nervous in the ordinary sense of that word. I was tense, ready, prepared. I'd done the work. Just one phrase could cause me grief. Zero Emission Site. That was the one to get across. Now that I'm on the inside of the waste management problem, if I want to see off incineration I've got to box clever. I've got to prove other alternatives and I've got to prove them against two further tests. They've got to make money and they've got to win votes.

This idea of recovery and designing-out waste at the front end is the realistic, modern way forward.

I presented my vision of a thriving eco-industrial park where the city's minimised waste was managed largely by conversion and re-manufacture into useful goods. I gave a timetable aiming at a zero emissions site and I projected up to five hundred new jobs. It was music to my audience's ears.

Such parks exist all over the world. Fewer and fewer gasification/incineration plants are being built in America. Towns and cities in Italy have turned their backs on what was named as 'old' technology. Responding to waste at the front end rather than at the back end is the modern way.

If we think there's a machine we can put crap into and get gold out of, we're codding ourselves.

If I had a success with the council, surprising Paddy, other officers and the councillors themselves, then it was only because I cannot live 'on the outside', as if I was a spectator of nature. I am a macroscopic being, embedded in the physical world. These pages record the everyday dialogue I write between myself and the world.

There are no easy options.

I have no grand powers to overtake the laws of thermodynamics, which say that time's arrow goes in one direction and that disorder and waste increase as time goes on. That affronts me, both as a scientist and as a person.

But there is optimism.

I am an expert in waste. A new set of initial conditions for my life and for the future. It will never be a smooth curve. Chaos makes sure of that, but the fractals, the apparently irregular, complex shapes and trajectories generated in the chaotic geometry of my life, will be mine. And they will be beautiful.

A Sudden Sun: novel; Dave Duggan; Guildhall Press; Derry, 2012

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