Back to index of Nerve 16 - Summer 2010

In the first of a series, Katy Brown of the Ethical Consumer Research Association and Greg Dropkin of Liverpool Friends of Palestine turn the spotlight on a company with public sector contracts and reveal why Dublin City Council has just resolved to sever links with Veolia.

What a Waste!
Why are our taxes going to... Veolia?

In April 2009, French company Veolia Environmental won a £640 million Private Finance Initiative 20 year contract for waste management and recycling for Merseyside and Halton. Veolia said its ‘innovative’ bid was focused on sustainable waste management including a major recycling infrastructure investment programme with a new Materials Recovery Facility at Gillmoss.

During the bidding Chief Executive Officer of Veolia Environmental Services, Denis Gasquet, commented: “...this long-term contract will make a major contribution to improving the waste infrastructure across Merseyside and diverting more waste away from landfill... the Gillmoss Recycling Park will not only significantly increase local recycling capacity but be the focus for a major community education and engagement exercise designed to build real momentum behind recycling.”

Despite the grand talk of sustainability and the cute name “Veolia Environmental”, the company has a record of causing environmental damage.

In 2008, Veolia was fined £13,500 for a major sewage spill which had closed beaches along the Forth estuary. Around 120 million litres of screened sewage went into the Forth after a mechanical failure at Veolia’s Edinburgh pumping station. The same year Veolia was fined £1,000 for illegally landfilling liquid wastes, with a fine the previous April for a similar incident and a string of prosecutions related to illegal waste disposal.

In 2008 a PFI incinerator burning up to 180,000 tonnes of waste a year, to be built between three sites of Special Scientific Interest, was referred to the Audit Commission. Campaigners claimed the contract between Veolia and Nottinghamshire County Council was loaded against local people. The PFI deal assumed the incinerator had a life expectancy of 50 years and would be handed to the council after 27, by which time it would be a ‘pile of scrap’, campaigners argued. Not one of the plant’s component parts had a manufacturer’s life expectancy exceeding 25 years. Campaigners also feared the incinerator’s capacity would limit recycling rates, so that Nottinghamshire residents would be unable to recycle more than 52 per cent of their waste.

Do we really want this company running waste disposal on Merseyside?

Veolia also belongs to several international corporate lobby groups. Such groups are criticised for exerting undue corporate influence on policy-makers in favour of market solutions to the detriment of the environment, animal welfare and human rights.

Palestine

However, it is Veolia’s role in the West Bank, Palestinian territory illegally occupied by Israel, which has brought the company under fire around the world. Veolia is directly violating international law as a leading partner in the CityPass consortium contracted to build a light railway linking West Jerusalem to illegal Israeli Jewish settlements built on seized Palestinian land on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem. The project strengthens the settlements and cuts off Palestinian communities. Veolia will operate the railway, supporting Israeli company Dan Bus which would be unable to deliver the project alone due to lack of experience.

Several financial institutions concerned with socially responsible investment say the railway will normalise the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, considered part of the Palestinian West Bank under international law. Some European politicians have also criticised the company because the project infringes on Palestinian human rights.

Veolia says it is committed to operating the railway on “a clear, non-discriminatory policy based on free access for all parts of the population” and would reconsider its involvement if it became apparent that running the railway on this basis would not be viable. But statements from CityPass spokesperson Ammon Elian confirm the service will be discriminatory. In April 2009 he explained that Palestinians and Jews are segregated in Jerusalem and that the first planned rail line is designed to meet the needs of the secular Jewish population, with one stop in a Palestinian neighbourhood, and a second line is planned to serve the Orthodox Jewish population. “If Palestinians want to make use of the light rail, both groups will not meet on the train, because of their different life patterns,” he said. Elian also claimed that as Palestinians are served by a network of buses, integration in the light rail would be redundant.
As to Dan Bus, their English-language website states “the Jewish battle of Jewish settlements for survival, from the pre-statehood ‘Incidents’ to the present day, has been an inseparable part of the Israeli experience. It is only natural that the Dan Cooperative has always been a central element in the struggle for the security of Israel, at all periods and in all circumstances” and that Israeli military forces use Dan’s bus fleet “in times of peace as well as of war.”

Veolia Transport also operates regular bus services to the illegal settlements, including Beit Horon and Givat Zeev, along road 443, on which Palestinians are banned from travelling.

The company also operates the segregated bus service 322 from Tel Aviv to Ashdod. Women enter through the rear of the vehicle and the men from the front. They cannot touch each other or sit next to one another. In some buses, a thick blanket is hung in the middle of the bus between the two sexes.

Dublin

During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Dublin tram drivers refused to train Israeli drivers on how to run the proposed CityPass system. On 10 May 2010, Dublin City Council unanimously called on the City Manager not to sign or renew any contracts with Veolia, in view of the CityPass scheme. The resolution, tabled by Cllr. Joan Collins (People Before Profit), cited similar decisions by Galway and Sligo city/county councils and highlighted the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the UN demand that Israeli settlement activities and occupation should not be supported.

Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) chairperson, Dr David Landy, commented: “This is a monumental victory for the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement... It is doubly welcome coming as it does on the same day that Israel was scandalously accepted into the OECD.”

In February 2009 Veolia lost a 3.5 billion Euro contract to run the Stockholm metro. After a campaign by West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Veolia failed to get on Sandwell Borough Council’s shortlist for a rubbish collection contract. Over a dozen UK local authorities are being challenged to exclude Veolia.

As the Merseyside contract sailed through the Waste Disposal Authority last year, Liverpool Friends of Palestine tried but failed to stop it. Their Boycott Divestment and Sanctions subgroup need your help. Contact LFoP: rosemary@lfop.fsnet.co.uk

Links:

BIG Campaign (Boycott Israeli Goods) www.bigcampaign.org
Ethical Consumer’s Corporate Critic database www.corporatecritic.org

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Comments:

Comment left by Leo on 10th August, 2010 at 20:49
Does anybody know anything about the implications for employment and the types of contracts under the new PFI? E.g. in Sandwell the binmen will strike soon against the wage decreases (the Single Status). Interestingly, the waste management will be taken over by a private subcontractor next year, probably Biffa. http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2010/08/10/sandwell-binmen-to-strike-in-days/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+expressandstar_news+(expressandstar.com+News+Feed

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