CLAIMS that the Fylde Coast could soon be home to a giant incinerator have been rubbished by a Lancashire county councillor.

Coun Richard Toon branded the claim by environmental pressure group Action to Reduce and Recycle Our Waste (ARROW) North West as "mischief making".

The group say Lancashire County Council's waste management sub-committee has voted to include provision for a 325,000 tonne incinerator in the Lancashire Waste Strategy.

The Fylde was one of the areas identified last summer in the draft strategy for "facilities, such as an energy-from-waste plant, major composting, recycling and treatment facilities", and campaigners believe this means an incinerator.

Nicola Escott of ARROW, added: "We are extremely concerned. The pollution that incinerators cause is very severe."

She accused the committee of "outmoded thinking" and using outdated research, adding: "It takes ten years to get an incinerator up and running. The committee are definitely making moves to start the whole process right now in the next few weeks. They are trying to pull the wool over over people's eyes."

But Coun Toon hit back, saying: "That is not right. That is ARROW who are mischief making. They are putting out these scare stories. The county council has no plans whatsoever for incinerators at this time."

But he admitted there may be a need in future for an incinerator.

"You can't recycle 100 per cent of waste, but the dilemma that councils have is that they can't be left with a proportion of waste for which no-one has got the answer.

"ARROW's own consultants said the only way we could square the circle would be to break European regulations and put more waste into the landfill."

He said a decision on whether to build an incinerator or not would not have to be made until 2005 and would depend on the level of recycling achieved by householders.

And he added that the council's powers to deal with planning applications from companies for incinerators should not be confused with the council's own plans for disposing of waste.

"You have got to disentangle the two issues. We could not prevent somebody putting forward a plan to get rid of waste from elsewhere. We have very, very tight and very, very precise criteria for dealing with planning applications but in terms of dealing with Lancashire's household waste we have no plans at all for building an incinerator."