BELFAST CITY Council has voted against building a £300 million incinerator on its land on the north foreshore of Belfast Lough.
Councillors voted against the proposal yesterday evening notwithstanding a special council survey which found that nine out of 10 respondents in Belfast were in favour of the incinerator.
Earlier this month, councillors voted by 17 votes to 16 against the proposal but that vote was ruled invalid because one councillor cited as voting had not attended the meeting.
In the second vote yesterday evening, councillors voted by 26 votes to 19 against the proposal. Sinn Féin, the SDLP and a number of unionist councillors from north Belfast, where the incinerator was proposed to be located, voted against. Alliance and most unionists supported the proposal.
Arc 21, a group of councils on the eastern seaboard of Northern Ireland, wanted the council to build the incinerator by 2016 and the council was considering whether to sell the land to the group.
The council said the incinerator was needed to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. Failure to meet European Union targets on how waste was dumped could lead to millions of pounds in European fines, councillors were warned. Fines could be as much as £3.7 million (€4.4 million) a year.
Supporters of the incinerator argued that not only would it address the problem of waste but that it would also provide heating electricity to serve up to 40,000 homes.