Incinerator objectors say fight goes on after approval

OBJECTORS to the country’s first household waste incinerator are to continue their fight in the courts after An Bord Pleanála cleared the construction of the facility yesterday.

The No Incineration Alliance which has campaigned against the incineration plant due to be built near Duleek, Co Meath will first ask the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for an oral hearing so they can voice their opposition.

But alliance spokesman Pat O’Brien said the next step, if they can not convince the EPA to withhold an operating licence from the plant, would involve a legal challenge.

An Bord Pleanála yesterday rejected an appeal by the alliance against planning permission granted by Meath County Council to Indaver Ireland to build an 80m incineration plant on a 25-acre site at Carranstown between Duleek and Drogheda.

The EPA is expected to make a decision on Indaver’s licence application within weeks and if it is approved, the company plans to have the plant up and running in 2006. Planning conditions will restrict it to burning 150,000 tonnes of waste per year and it will only be allowed accept waste from the north-eastern counties of Meath, Louth, Cavan and Monaghan.

Indaver Ireland general manager John Ahern said yesterday while the company could accept the tonnage restrictions, it would have to consider its position on the ban on waste from outside the north-east.

The alliance said it was disappointed but not surprised at the decision. Its members have complained that they were unable to raise health and environmental issues during a planning appeals hearing last October as these were issues deemed to be outside the scope of normal planning considerations.

“Nothing should be considered until everything is considered and the very fact that health and the environment were not considered is a disgrace,” Mr O’Brien said.

“We would look on this as a flawed process with a flawed result and the fight will go on,” Mr O’Brien said.

The progress of the Indaver plant, first flagged three years ago, was being closely watched by anti-incineration groups in communities across the country that have been earmarked as possible locations for any of seven regional incinerators the Government says are needed to cope with the country’s growing waste problem.

Nine smaller commercial incinerators handling various kinds of industrial waste are already in operation around the country but the Carranstown facility will be the first to handle the much larger quantities of domestic, retail and catering industry waste that normally go to landfill.

Opponents argue that emissions from these large-scale incinerators leave cancer-causing dioxins in the air. A report from the Health Research Board published last month found no evidence for links between incinerators and cancer but also pointed out a deficiency in dioxin monitoring here.

An Taisce condemned yesterday’s decision and said a policy of waste reduction was the way forward. “Any society that chooses incineration and super-dumps is raising a flag to its own shortsightedness,” it said.

Green Party MEP Nuala Ahern described the incinerator as a serious mistake. “It will burn 150,000 tonnes of waste, generating 50,000 tonnes of ash which will still have to be disposed of. It will not solve the waste problem,” she said.

Fine Gael Louth TD Fergus O’Dowd said the minister for the environment had placed a monster in the midst of the community.