63,000 lodge environmental complaints with local authorities

Local authorities received over 63,000 environmental complaints last year from the public, the majority of them over waste issues including illegal dumping.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that councils received approximately 10,000 more complaints than in 2013.

Of the contacts made by members of the public in 2014, around 54,700 related to waste, primarily dumping.

By contrast, there was a fall in the number of complaints lodged with local authorities regarding waste water, down to 5,300 last year, while there had been 1,600 complaints linked to air or odour, and 1,400 complaints lodged over noise.

The surge in calls over waste issues came as the EPA’s own National Environmental Complaints Line (NECL) experienced a drop in the number of people making contact.

A 24-hour lo-call telephone number, it allows the public to report pollution or illegal dumping, with local authorities, the gardaí or the EPA in position to follow up on the information provided.

In the past two-and-a-half years, it has received more than 5,600 calls but at a gradually reducing rate.

However, the vast majority of calls to the NECL involve waste and illegal dumping, similar to the bulk of the calls lodged with local authorities.

According to an EPA spokesperson: “The NECL represents around 5% of total environment complaints received by local authorities.”

An analysis of calls to the NECL for the past three months indicated parts of the country which prompted the most calls. In that period, more than 90 complaints made to the NECL were passed to Dublin City Council for handling, by far the highest.

Almost 60 complaints to the NECL were passed on to Wicklow County Council for further investigation, while a similar number of complaints were channelled to Cork County Council from the NECL.

South Dublin County Council had the fourth-highest volume of calls requiring follow-up investigation as a result of NECL complaints.

By contrast, some local authority areas received just a handful of notifications from the NECL in the same period, with Galway County and City Councils, and local authorities in Clare, Cavan, Mayo and Longford among the areas to receive 10 or fewer NECL notifications.

As to issues the public has been contacting the NECL about, in the past three months 188 complaints were lodged about illegal dumping (20 bags or fewer) — almost half the total number of complaints lodged in that quarter.

There were another 80 calls regarding the illegal dumping of more than 20 bags and some 47 complaints about “backyard burning”.

The remaining complaints were split between air quality, litter, spills or discharges into public waterways, industrial noises and odours, agricultural odours and there were 12 complaints made about noise in neighbourhoods.

Despite the high volume of complaints received by both local authorities and the NECL, the number of prosecutions brought as a result of the complaints has not been determined.

It emerged this month that local authorities could be considering imposing fines of up to €3,000 on businesses and households that fail to properly dispose of waste.

In May, a special team of council workers in Cork County recovered 2.18 tonnes of rubbish in just 12 days, as part of a clean-up operation in north Cork.

Due to claims of a rise in ‘fly-tipping’ in Co Limerick, the local authority there has been urged by some Councillors to install CCTV as a deterrent, while Donegal County Council has also signalled its willingness to place CCTV cameras in certain areas that have been the location for illegal dumping.