FIGURES showing the Raikes Lane incinerator was spewing out emissions nearly three times its authorised limit were kept secret for 15 months.

The Government's Environment Agency ordered monitoring to be carried out at the waste burner in January 1996 before it was closed down late last year.

But the results, which showed a massive breach of its authorisation limit on emissions, were not supplied to the Agency until January 1997.

It took a further three months before the figures were put on the public register. No action was taken against GM Waste following the breach.

Now environment watchdogs Friends of the Earth are demanding to know why there was such a long delay and have questioned the reliability of the agency.

The figures differed widely with monitoring carried out by GM Waste which showed that emissions were within authorisation limits.

The revelations follow Bolton Council's decision to give the go-ahead to GM Waste to re-open the incinerator and turn it into an energy-from-waste burner which will generate electricity for 7,000 homes.

GM Waste has pledged that state-of-the-art technology installed in the burner will reduce emissions which will be monitored extensively.

But Bolton Friends of the Earth campaigner Dennis Watson said the Environment Agency data casts doubt on GM Waste's ability to monitor its incinerator effectively and deliver a clean environment to the people of Bolton.

Mr Watson said: "When councillors passed this plan they felt safe in trusting the Environment Agency and Greater Manchester Waste to monitor the emissions and were assured that emissions would be within safe limits. They can't both be right.

"What we have discovered now is that the same local authority-owned company who are promising low emissions apparently breached limits last year and it took 15 months before the public got to know about it.

"It highlights the difficulties in controlling emissions and it proves that the Environment Agency, who took no action at all, is a toothless lapdog rather than a watchdog."

Friends of the Earth oppose the incinerator despite promises of lower emissions because of a "wealth of evidence" linking low levels of dioxins with cancers and other illnesses.

An Environment Agency spokesman said the delay was caused because a new contractor had taken over monitoring of the plant.

The spokesman said: "There was no action taken against GM Waste on that occasion. We looked into the full circumstances and weighed up the value of prosecution.

"The incinerator was to be closed down and it was agreed there was nothing to be gained from prosecuting."

GM Waste's Finance Director, Graham Johnson, said the company had confidence in its own monitoring.

He said: "We will be subject to a rigorous monitoring regime and will be able to comply with it."

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