Council to spend €1m on ‘odour control’ filters

DUBLIN City Council is installing a set of “odour-control” filters at the €300 million wastewater treatment plant in Ringsend to combat foul smells emanating from it.

It is the council’s latest attempt to rectify odour problems which have been ongoing since the plant opened last June.

The new odour-control filters will cost around €1 million and should be up and running by the end of June.

The plant caters for sewage from Dublin’s four local authority areas but within weeks of its opening last year, residents complained of odours coming from it, saying they had to keep windows and doors closed in spite of the summer heat.

The council acknowledged the problem and said it would be rectified by that September.

However, odour problems have persisted, and residents now fear “another intolerable summer”, according to local solicitor Damien Cassidy, who is chairman of the Ringsend, Irishtown and Sandymount Environment Group.

In a recent letter to Mr Cassidy, the council said it was “making every effort to try and mitigate the odour on the site. As this is a new plant, there are obviously issues which require to be resolved and we are using our best endeavours to do so.”

But Mr Cassidy said: “This is not a new plant any longer, and there should not be mitigating circumstances one year after its opening.”

But city engineer Michael Philips said the problem was not as bad as it had been, and the council was continuing its efforts to rectify it.