Care centre will be forced to close if dump goes ahead
The Camphill Community in South Tipperary is furious over an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision to grant a licence with a number of conditions to South Tipperary County Council for the landfill. The landfill would be less than three-quarters of a mile away from the centre and supporters of the organisation said it would sound the death knell for their community.
The Camphill Community said it plans to request either an oral hearing or lodge an objection.
Plans for the 40-acre landfill at Hard Bog, Grangemockler, County Tipperary, have long courted controversy. In 2000, a proposal went to an oral hearing carried out by the EPA and in December of the same year the High Court heard a judicial review of the matter and quashed the licence.
Founder of the Camphill Community, Joseph Teppan said if the plan goes ahead the landfill would wreck the peaceful surroundings of the Camphill centre and undermine what the group was trying to achieve.
"We are terribly disappointed with the decision by the EPA but we are not surprised. If the dump goes here then we will go. We are totally committed to providing a high quality of life for the people who come here."
Camphill has been operating since 1988 in the area. Twenty eight adults attend daily 23 of whom are in full-time residence at the centre. "We have been speaking to people living the same distance from existing landfills. If any of the things which are happening there were to happen here, then we certainly could not operate," Mr Teppan said.
South Tipperary County Council's senior executive officer, Jimmy Harney, said that the new site was critical for the area.
"We looked at exporting waste but the cost would be phenomenal. Otherwise we would be at the mercy of other local authorities which are in a similar situation. We are happy with the site, it is reasonably isolated and the EPA is also happy with it," he said.
