An environmental campaign group is opposing a proposed £80m energy-from-waste plant which residents say will be a blot on the local landscape.

Radiation Free Lakeland has submitted its objection to the proposed Energy Recovery Facility at Kingmoor Park, a short distance from the Lowry Hill housing estate and Kingmoor Nature Reserve.

More than 360 people have signed an online petition against it.

They say the facility – featuring a 70 metre high chimney - should not be so near to a housing estate or schools, though the developer insists there is no health risk.

Those backing the facility – which will take household waste and burn it at high temperatures to generate electricity – insist it will be safe and that it will create dozens of jobs. Nor would there be odours or toxic emissions, says developer Verus.

Now the opponents have been backed by the anti-nuclear campaign group, which has written to the county council's development control committee meeting which will consider the application.

Marianne Birkby, from the group, has asked councillors for an assurance that “exempt” waste from Cumbria's nuclear industry will not go to the incinerator – though the developer said this will not happen.

Mrs Birkby describes the proposed plant as a “blight on character of the area” and says that, with its 70 metre chimney, it would be “massively out of character” for Carlisle.

Her letter describes the plant's likely impact suggesting it will be "dominant and oppressive" and may leave the city “swathed in dioxins."

Earlier this year, Lowry Hill Road resident Alisdair McKee, 46, claimed at least 80 per cent of locals opposed it.

Objectors' comments, posted on the Change.org petition, include:

  • Robert Reid-Sinclair, Carlisle: "It should be sited on Spadeadam in the extreme north east of the county with carbon catchers in the chimney.” Janine Barnsley, Carlisle: “This should not be built so close to family homes and schools. Please move it.”
  • Peter Barnsley, Carlisle: “I am unhappy about the risk to health, the smell and the visual impact so close to a housing estate and school.”
  • Fraser Clark, Carlisle: “The location of this facility close to housing at Lowry Hill is not only inappropriate from its visual impact near a nature reserve, but the greater concern is the impact on health to the population of Carlisle for generations to come from the release of deadly dioxins from the waste incineration process."
  • June Straughton, Carlisle: “This proposed incinerator is planned in totally the WRONG place."

Tim Jervis, for the developer Verus, said: “We won't be contracting with the nuclear industry for waste.” In an earlier comment, he said: "There is absolutely no risk to health. We are extremely careful to avoid that.

“We are subject to stringent UK and European Commission pollution controls."

Members of the development control committee will consider the application today.