Waste plant may be first in fast-track plan system
The €200 million project would use a technology never before tried in Europe to process 365,000 tonnes of household waste a day at a depleted quarry on the Dublin side of the Dublin-Kildare border.
Project developers, Energy Answers International, reject the term incinerator, describing the facility as a “resource recovery project”. However, their facility would burn waste although using a modified boiler with a system of air flows and grates that allow recoverable materials to escape melting and instead be filtered out for collection.
In this way the company says it will extract €1,000 in coins each day, enough copper to build four Statues of Liberty in a year, enough aluminium to make nine jumbo jets and sufficient iron and steel to make one James Joyce Bridge every month.
They also claim the ash they recover could be used to make enough concrete blocks to build a 10m-high wall running about 24km long, while the energy they would create from burning the waste would power 43,000 homes.
At the outset they say more than 90% of all the waste they would take in would be recovered or reused with the remainder going to landfill, but they say the long-term aim would be to have nothing left over after processing.
“Incineration means destruction by fire. What we have is a boiler that creates energy and recovers materials from waste. There is a distinct difference,” said Pat Mahoney, president of Energy Answers International. “It’s a difference that most people will not recognise and we have to expect that and we have to make the time and the effort to educate people as to how this works and how it’s different.”
The company already run a similar facility in Cape Cod on the east coast of the United States, but this is their first foray into Ireland. Consultant to the project, Anne Butler, a former director of the Environmental Protection Agency, said they were aware of the history of negative reaction from communities to waste facilities here but were confident of winning support.
No planning application has been lodged but the company intends seeking permission directly from An Bord Pleanála under the system set up by the Strategic Infrastructure Act. Diarmuid Collins, secretary of An Bord Pleanála, said no contact had been made yet by the company.
“They are statutorily obliged to contact us for pre-planning consultation and it is the board who will decide whether the project is strategic infrastructure and can be dealt with under the new procedures. If not, it will have to go through the normal planning process.”
The nearest concentration of homes to the Behan Quarry site where the facility would be built is in Rathcoole, 3.5km away.
* The company’s plans are on the project website, www.n7rrp.ie. A series of public information sessions will be held each Thursday from 10am to 9pm at the project office in Citywest, starting next Thursday, September 13.
