Republican News · Thursday 21 January 1999

[An Phoblacht]

A crisis growing every day

 
Fact:

If waste sorting and recycling became standard practice, more than two-thirds of domestic waste could be re-used or recycled.


Shortage of landfill sites has reached crisis proportions in Ireland. Existing dumps are full up and have to close. Finding new ones is a major problem. Environmentalists are saying that no landfill site is safe, no lining can be 100% effective against the highly toxic leachates. No one wants a landfill site near them.

Last week over 100 people in Ballinasloe stood out in the freezing weather to block access to their local dump at Poolboy. Galway City refuse was going to Galway Corporation dump at Carrowbrowne, until it was forced, on high court order, to close. The corpo started to dump the garbage into the Ballinasloe dump. Poolboy is only licensed by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to take 40,000 tons of garbage. With the closure of Carrowbrowne, Poolboy becomes the only dump in the county which needs to dispose of over 100,000 tons per annum.

Local UDC members in Ballinasloe said they believed that the UDC was acting illegally in allowing Galway refuse into Poolboy. The protest was summarily stopped by an injunction taken by the UDC against the Ballinasloe picketers, and Galway City collections, which had been stopped, resumed.

The protesters, determined to fight the injunction came back to court last Monday (17 January) where in order to facilitate them to prepare their case against the UDC, the matter was adjourned until 11 February. Meanwhile the injunction stands, and the dumping of Galway's garbage at Poolboy, illegal or not, goes on.

At a Galway council meeting last Friday, councillors were enraged to hear that plans for investigating three sites for a county superdump were known to the people before the councillors were informed. Reluctant to see the issue become a political football between councillors in the forthcoming local elections, some councillors were relieved at the plan for a £40 million `thermal treatment' plant (another word for an incinerator) near the city.

Environmentalists have argued that incineration is worse than landfill, because although it reduces bulk, burning waste pollutes the atmosphere and the remaining highly toxic ash, consisting of very small particles, offers a bigger surface area for toxicity to leach into its environment.

But landfill problems are not limited to Co. Galway. Cork city and county dump at Kinsale Road is scheduled to close next year. A replacement has to be found. Dublin, which has over one million tons of residential and commercial waste to dispose of, faces similar problems, with the Ballealy tip head at Lusk scheduled to close in five years.

Under the 1996 Waste Management Act, local authorities bear the ultimate responsibility. While the problem is seen in terms of choosing between political constituencies for super dumps, it has no equitable, legal or sustainable solution. As Brian Stanley, a Sinn Fein candidate in Portlaoise, says, ``the Three R's do not amount to `educating' households to take their plastic bags back to Dunnes Stores, or passing leaflets round the schools and doors calling on people to sort their waste. It requires at least that each local authority enables householders to separate their waste at source and collects the sorted waste, without penalising householders with increasing costs.''


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