DOZENS of angry protesters made calls for Winfrith to be dropped as a possible location for Dorset's first high-tech waste treatment plant.

May 24 marked the first day of a public inquiry into the Dorset Waste Plan which includes proposals to build a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant on farmland just outside Winfrith Technology Centre.

Winfrith Parish Council chairman Sandra Ellis said: "This is the wrong place to site these facilities - this is on a green field in an area that floods and it will increase traffic.

"The road from Warmwell roundabout to Wool is quite a dangerous road with difficult junctions along it."

She also raised concerns over the potential fire hazard of proposals to generate refuse-derived fuel from the waste treatment plant.

"In effect it will be an incinerator right near heathland," she said. "This fuel cannot be used by power stations, it can only be used in cement kilns and paper mills, and there are none of those around here."

Wool parish councillor Maggie Snook said: "This is not nimbyism - we are a small community and this is overwhelming - we are really being dumped on.

"Traffic is already a problem here and we will have 170 huge rubbish lorries coming into the site.

"We are worried about the wash off into the River Frome which is a pure chalk river where salmon and trout spawn. This is such a sensitive area - we have SSSI and Hardy's heathland here."

Dorset County Council has drawn up plans for MBT plants to meet government recycling targets and the first needs to be up and running by 2008 if Dorset it is to escape hefty fines.

At the moment Dorset produces 12 million black bags of waste each year and the council estimates the amount of waste being produced is doubling every 20 years.

A seven-acre site is needed to build an MBT plant and the Dorset Waste Plan includes proposals to site MBTs at Ferndown and Bournemouth.

First published: May 25