Patrick Commissioners has submitted what it believes to be a better plan for a new sewage treatment works in the west of the island.

Manx Utilities has long favoured building at Glenfaba House, Glenfaba Road, Raggatt, but despite its application (19/00462/B) having been submitted over a year ago, a decision has still yet to be made.

The commissioners’ application (20/00344/A) is only a application in principle, meaning it would require further approval were it to be approved. However, the local authority said it wanted its proposal to be considered ’in tandem’ with the MUA application.

Rather than build at the former Glenfaba House site, which has already been acquired by Manx Utilities, Patrick Commissioners has recommended fields between Glenfaba Road and the former Douglas to Peel railway line.

In its application, the local authority said that a sewage works for the west is needed, but that ’believes that the [Glenfaba House] location is far from optimal’.

The application added: ’It is the desire of the commissioners that an alternative be considered at the same time as the application for full approval by Manx Utilities.

’It is understood that if there is no alternate plan on the table, a planning inquiry will not consider any alternate site even should this be available, and so the commissioners present their proposal for this alternate site.’

The local authority has admitted that the technical work on its proposed site would have to be done by utilities experts, but that they were focussed on the location rather than the works itself.

Patrick Commissioners said that its preferred site has many advantages over the Glenfaba House location chosen by Manx Utilities, including that it ’exceeds’ the land available to build on.

The Commissioners say in its application that it is also ’close to Peel town, is accessible through an industrial area which would also allow for pipework to run close to oil and other pipework in that area and benefits from being almost level with Peel town, reducing the need for pumping’.

This application also criticises the green credentials of the Manx Utilities plan, saying that it ’risks contravening the island’s Unesco biosphere status’ due to its plans to incorporate a carbon-based fuelled plant to pump sewage to the Glenfaba House site.

Patrick Commissioners said that the site it proposes would allow for a ’forward-thinking enclosed sewage plant based upon renewable hyrdo-electric or other renewable energy as MUA sees fit’.

It added: ’Instead of the risk of the negative PR when the public realises that the first new infrastructure project by MU, post release of the government’s new carbon reduction climate change commitment, takes no account of its principals, MU will be seen ultimately as proactive, as properly embracing the changing impact of the new government policy.’

The Commissioners said that rejection of the Glenfaba House site would ’avoid the realisation in 10 years’ time that a distant uphill site relying on fossil fuels to pump from Peel front is simply not fit for purpose.’

The Manx Utilities’ proposed treatment works at Glenfaba forms part of phase two of the regional sewage treatment strategy.

The vast majority of Peel’s sewage currently flows by gravity down to the pumping station on the promenade, where it is held in large storm storage tanks. It is then pumped out to sea via the outfall in an unscreened and untreated form. The outfall runs out below Peel’s main beach and discharges the raw sewage beyond the breakwater.