Animal waste plant deadline focuses local opposition
South Tipperary County Council has received hundreds of objections over the application submitted earlier this year by Green Organics Energy (GOE) Ltd.
Among the objectors and a member of lobby group South Tipperary for Clean Industry (STCI) is racehorse trainer Aidan O’Brien. His Ballydoyle stables are two miles from the site outside Rosegreen.
GOE says if it goes ahead, the plant, planned for a site at Castleblake — four miles from Cashel and six from Clonmel — will “comply with, and exceed, the most stringent environmental standards that exist nationally and internationally”.
However, objectors are concerned about possible effects on the environment, and particularly on the regional aquifer, where the area’s water comes from.
STCI says the council has refused permission for 15 houses in the area over the last 16 months because of proximity to the aquifer.
“This is the same vulnerable aquifer on which it is now proposed that an enormous waste and rendering facility be built in Rosegreen,” said spokesperson Douglas Butler yesterday.
“The people in Galway have not been able to drink their water since March. Ennis has a similar problem. The county council has an obligation to protect Tipperary residents from the same fate by refusing permission to build a national waste facility that poses such great risk to our water supply.”
He said the plant, which GOE intends to use to extract electricity from animal waste, will require land-spreading of 20,000 tonnes of sludge each year.
“It is inconceivable that such a project could be considered safe in an area where over-concentration of domestic individual septic tanks is deemed to pose a threat to the groundwater.”
He urged local people to send objection letters to the council in time for tomorrow’s deadline.
GOE is a consortium, including National By-Products, which ran a rendering plant on the site for years until recently. It says more than €75 million will be invested in ensuring the proposed “state-of-the-art facility” will be built and operated in compliance with strict requirements laid downby the European Union, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture.
The company describes the proposed Castleblake facility as an “anaerobic digester facility and a bio-diesel plant” designed to “process animal by-products and supplementary biomass materials to generate energy in the form of electricity and bio-diesel”.
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