Public to bear cost of mothballed super dump

SUFFERING ratepayers in Co Cork will have to foot some of the cost of mothballing a €46.8 million state-of-the-art super dump.

County councillors voted yesterday to indefinitely put on hold opening the facility at Bottlehill.

County manager Martin Riordan advised it was not financially viable to operate the facility in the current climate — due to some private landfill operators offering cheaper costs.

County mayor Tim Lombard said the people of Cork would have to pay for a mistake caused by national waste policy from the late 1990s, which dictated landfills were the way to dispose of refuse. “That’s a thundering disgrace,” the Fine Gael man said.

Councillors reluctantly agreed with the county manager that it was too risky to open the site.

Mr Riordan said he would need refuse companies to pay €50 per tonne and bury 120,000 tonnes annually in order to break even.

He said while the council had acquired good interest rates on the loan to build Bottlehill, it would still have to repay €2.2m on the loan next year and make repayments for several years to come.

“When we started (building it) in 2001 we were told landfill was a national policy. Now there are 19 million tonnes of capacity in the country and the levy (imposed by the Government on each tonne buried) is set to rise. Now the national policy is driving waste away from landfills,” Mr Riordan said.

He added that unless the Government changed its attitude and demanded waste generated in a region was buried there, then he couldn’t compel operators to use Bottlehill.

The county manager said he was waiting to see if the Government would change the rules next year.

He maintained that the levy should be returned to local authorities which had invested in landfills and not be pocketed by central government.

Fine Gael’s Cllr Michael Hegarty said: “We did everything on national (waste) guidelines and we’ve been left with a massive debt hanging over us. It is too much of a high risk to open it at the moment. Hopefully waste will have to be directed to regional landfills like Bottlehill in the future. For now our hands are tied.”

Labour’s Paula Desmond said it was a “sad saga no local autonomy was allowed on waste management” while Cllr Alan Coleman (FF) urged officials to “look outside the box” for a solution.

Cllr Tom Sheahan (FG) said the council had been left with a serious millstone around its neck. “I’d hazard a guess it will be another five to ten years before we even think of opening it,” he said.