When NO-ONE from the Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham (BDR) Waste Partnership project took up the invitation to answer questions from a full house at Mexborough Resource Centre on Monday night, it was left to anti-waste plant campaigners to educate their fellow residents about the environmental and traffic horrors Don and Dearne people can reasonably expect.

These include up to a staggering 336 bin lorry trips per DAY on local roads, to and from Manvers.

The Times has finally obtained figures from the three authorities for the number of bin wagons currently in use - which total 56... five more than even the protesters had estimated.

And the campaigners warn of two or even three trips per day to and from the facility - totalling 224 to 336 daily!

Despite waste bosses offering an excuse for absence of "not being able to add anything more...to the considerable amount of information already given out to members of the public", residents who live within half a mile of the site said they had never heard of the plans until they read the coverage in the Times.

Committee members of the Dearne Valley Against Incineration in Manvers (AIM) group, told the meeting the BDR Waste Partnership had only sent letters and leaflets to a total of 1,300 residents - roughly 0.016 per cent of the 770,300 combined population of the three boroughs - about waste site plans!

Dearne Valley AIM chairman, Peter Stuart, said: "They advertised the consultation in places such as Doncaster bus station and Barnsley Library and the latest public drop-ins only drew 130 attendees across three sessions because no one knew it was taking place.

"They didn't even put a sign up on the door at the Bolton venue and when we leafletted people to get them there, they changed the date just days before, blaming the England World Cup game."

Bolton-upon Dearne resident Malcolm Chappell questioned the council's legal handling of the consultation.

He said: "When consultation is so scant, this could be an abuse of process.