Planning granted for major Waterford landfill

WATERFORD County Council’s controversial proposal to develop a major landfill has passed the crucial final planning stage following a four-year bitter battle.

An Bord Pleanála has upheld the decision of the local authority to grant full planning permission for the landfill at Garrynagree, five miles outside Dungarvan just off the main Waterford/Cork road.

The landfill will cater for the needs of both city and county for the next 20 years. Work on it is expected to begin in the first half of next year, subject to the granting of a licence by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The Bord Pleanála decision has come as a devastating blow to the local Lickey Concern Group which has strongly opposed the landfill from the very beginning. “It is very upsetting to get this decision just a week before Christmas,” a spokesperson for the group said.

The decision is certain to be welcomed by the local authority given that its landfill at Dungarvan has already been closed and a second one in Tramore is due to close next summer.

The council’s countywide search for a site for the landfill began over six years ago and initially three locations, all in the eastern part of the county, were identified. Subsequent soil tests, however, ruled out all three sites and three further sites were identified - this time all of them in the western end of the county.

The council’s consultant engineers favoured the Garrynagree site, and then began one of the most protracted and bitter battles in the council’s history.

Locals immediately set up the Lickey Concern Group, pledging to oppose the landfill at Garrynagree.

They took their campaign to the High Court and earlier this year were granted a week-long oral hearing conducted in Dungarvan by a senior Bord Pleanála inspector.

The Lickey Concern Group’s said the landfill posed a human health risk and endangered the nearby renowned Lickey fishing river. Serious concerns were also expressed about the impact the landfill would have on traffic flow in the area, and the massive costs that will be involved in transporting refuse almost 50 miles from parts of the eastern end of the county.

“We are obviously shocked to receive the Bord Pleanála decision in the week before Christmas,” the LCG spokesperson said. “We will be looking at the appeal board’s report in detail in the coming days before deciding our next move.

“There still has to be an EPA licence granted and one cannot go ahead without the other,” the spokesperson said. “It’s not definite yet that the landfill will go ahead,” she added.