Scrap yard on reservoir to be shut

A LOCAL authority is poised to shut down and clean up an unauthorised end-of-life vehicle compound located next to a reservoir which supplies drinking water to 95,000 people, a court heard yesterday.

Taxpayers will have to foot Cork County Council’s €16,000 clean-up bill to remove about 140 cannibalised vehicles, car parts, tyres, and batteries stored on the three-acre site at Coolcower, just outside Macroom in Co Cork.

Hazardous materials on the site, which juts into part of the River Lee’s reservoir system, include hydrocarbons, PCBs, lead and battery acid.

But the site has no containment measures whatsoever, Clonakilty Circuit Court heard yesterday.

Colman Kelly, an executive scientist in the waste enforcement section of Cork County Council’s Environment Department, told Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin that the council began investigating the site on foot of complaints.

In February 2008, the council served Section 18 and Section 55 notices, under the Waste Management Act, on the site’s operator, Corneilius O’Leary, a pensioner who lives in a caravan on the site, directing him to quantify and qualify the materials stored there, to prepare a remediation plan for the site, to stop accepting waste there, and to cease the operation.

Mr O’Leary was given some time to resolve the issues, but the notices were not complied with, Mr Kelly said.

He told the court that in August 2009, he had recommended mounting a prosecution against Mr O’Leary, under Section 32 of the Waste Management Act, for causing environmental pollution, and Section 39, for operating the site without a permit or licence.

Mr O’Leary was convicted and fined a total of €9,000 in the district court this year, and was given time to deal with the removal of car batteries from the site.

But he brought an appeal against the severity of the fine to Clonakilty Circuit Court yesterday.

Mr O’Leary’s solicitor, Pat Gould, said his client lives in difficult circumstances, in a caravan on the site, without electricity, and could not afford to pay.

He also said his client had arranged for the removal of some 18 tonnes of scrap metal from the site in recent months.

But Mr Kelly told Judge Ó Donnabháin that an inspection of the site earlier this week showed little improvement from previous inspections.

He said experts engaged by the council have said there are still up to 140 end-of-life vehicles stored there.

He said the council has no option but to tackle the site given new EU regulations, which could see the State being fined up to €1,000 a day from January 1 for not cleaning up sites like this.

Judge Ó Donnabháin said it is “incumbent on everyone to clean up this site as soon as possible”.

He told Mr O’Leary that council officials have the power to move on to the site at any time, and any day, over the next week or so to begin the clean-up.

He warned Mr O’Leary not to interfere with the operation and said there would be dramatic consequences for him if he did.

He adjourned his decision on the severity of the fines until the clean-up is complete.

Cork County Council has shut down 180 such unauthorised end-of-life vehicle sites across the county in the last five years.

Several other sites are currently under investigation.

Picture: The unauthorised site at Coolcower, which protrudes into the River Lee’s reservoir system, contains hazardous materials such as lead and battery acid, as well as about 140 scrapped cars. The reservoir supplies drinking water to 95,000 people.