| Portrack Incinerator | |
| Coordinates: | 54.5712°N -1.2668°W |
| Country: | England |
| Location: | County Durham, North East England |
| Th Fuel Primary: | Waste |
| Commissioned: | 1975 |
| Decommissioned: | 1996 |
The Portrack Incinerator was a municipal waste incinerator and waste-to-energy power station situated on the River Tees at Portrack in Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, England.
The incinerator was opened in 1975 to burn the domestic waste of the four local authorities of Middlesbrough, Stockton on Tees, Redcar & Cleveland and Hartlepool.[1] It was praised as an environmentally friendly answer to waste management on Teesside.[2] The plant burned approximately 200,000 tonnes of waste every year and had the potential capacity to generate 20 megawatts (MW) of electricity although it never actually did so.[1] Ash from the incinerator was sent to landfill and ferrous metal baled and sold on as scrap.During the 1980s, a former quarry at Whitton was used as a site to dump the incinerator's ash.[3]
In the early 1990s, Northumbrian Water and Internal Technology Europe Ltd. applied for planning permission to build a sludge incinerator alongside the waste incinerator.These plans were refused, despite an appeal in 1992.[4]
The incinerator was closed down in November 1996, after failing to meet new emission regulations.The plant was then demolished and its site cleared between 1998 and 2000.[1] The incinerator's 300feet tall chimney was demolished on 14 March 1999.[5] The budget for the demolition went into the red in early 2000.[6] The north part of the site was used as the Stockton civic amenity dump, until it closed in December 2001.[1]
The incinerator was superseded by the Teesside WTE Power Station a couple of miles down river at Haverton Hill.
| Portrack Meadows Wildlife Reserve | |
| Photo Width: | 250 |
| Location: | Stockton-on-Tees, England |
| Operator: | Tees Valley Wildlife Trust |
| Website: | teeswildlife.org |
| Map: | England |
After the Portrack Incinerator site was cleared it was transformed into a site for recreation and wildlife and named Portrack Meadows Wildlife Reserve.[1] The site is managed by Tees Valley Wildlife Trust who have placed several interpretation boards around the site for the visitor.At the site's blocked-off northern road entrance is a public sculpture entitled Germination (2005) commissioned by Tees Valley Wildlife.[7] [8]
Many trees were planted around the incinerator to screen it off, but when the site was cleared to give other plants a chance to grow, many of these trees were pollarded.After clearing the incinerator site it was planted with hedgerows, oak trees and sown with wildflower seeds.[8] [9] However the concrete base of the incinerator still remains under the site - a fact that may account for the extremely dense vegetation.