Cllr Jonathan Elmer is amongst those speaking out against the £2.1b plans NORTH-EAST councils have been pressured to drop £2.1 billion plans for a monster incinerator that will burn waste from across the region for decades to come. A potential 40-year project to burn rubbish from Newcastle, County Durham, Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and Stockton at a giant waste facility in Redcar was announced last year. The scheme, which will see about 450,000 tonnes of waste a year being sent to the site, has left environmental activists appalled. A Stop Incineration in the North-East (SINE) campaign has been launched to oppose the building of the plant, which for some has brought back troubling memories of the Byker ash scandal in Newcastle, in which the city council was prosecuted after 2,000 tonnes of ash from the old Byker incinerator was found to contain potentially cancer-causing dioxins.