Illegal dump contaminating groundwater, committee hears

A major illegal dump by construction giant, Cement Roadstone Holdings Plc in West Wicklow has already contaminated the area’s groundwater, it was claimed today.

But the Environmental Protection Agency today said it could be 100 years before drinking water for Dublin at a nearby reservoir would be affected.

The EPA recently rejected a licence application by CRH to move the waste to a new landfill on its lands and the firm is currently appealing this decision.

Speaking of the CRH dump in Blessington, EPA director general Dr Mary Kelly told the Oireachtas Environment Committee: “To my knowledge, there is contamination beginning to occur into the groundwater from the site.

“However it is moving at a very slow pace and it imposes no threat. The figure I have seen is up to 100 years.”

Wicklow Labour TD Liz McManus said: “The situation in Co Wicklow is very stark and extremely disturbing.”

Senator Terry Leyden of Fianna Fáil said that Wicklow, as the ’Garden of Ireland’ was in danger of becoming known as the ’Illegal Dump of Ireland’.

Fergus O’Dowd of Fine Gael said: “Local authorities should be absolutely and totally embarrassed if they’re not doing their job.”

Ciaran Cuffe of the Green Party claimed that illegal dumps near Blessington in Co Wicklow were upstream from Dublin’s major reservoir.

He said that over a number of years, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of illegal waste were deposited on CRH lands.

He said that CRH came before the committee in 2003 and “denied all knowledge” of the waste.

“Frankly I think it an outrageous and incredible statement from CRH that it had no knowledge of when or who deposited that waste on its lands,” he said.

Dr Kelly has had several meetings with CRH and Wicklow Co Council and their respective consultants about the waste.

She said CRH has applied for a licence in December 2004 to move the waste into a properly managed landfill site on its lands.

They refused the application on the grounds that there would be an unacceptable risk to environmental pollution to a local aquifer, the excavation of the waste could contaminate ground water and cause odours and that CRH didn’t satisfy EPA that it would dispose of all of the waste concerned.

“I understand people’s concerns that this is dragging on for quite a number of years,” said Dr Kelly.

CRH has a 28-day statutory period to appeal the EPA decision.

Ms McManus calculated that 630,000 tonnes of waste had been found on three separate sites in West Wicklow.

“This adds up to enormous criminal activity, a very lucrative business, hundreds of thousands of illegal waste.

“Yet only four years on, there has only been one court case. I do think we need to look at why there has been so little outcome,” she said.

Dr Kelly said that a major report on illegal dumping to be published in September would find that Wicklow and Kildare were the worst-affected counties in the country.

She said that gardaí and detectives from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation were pursuing prosecutions in relation to the discovery of waste in several sites in Wicklow.

“We’re not happy at all that there is an illegal landfill so close to the residents [in two residential estates in Blessington].

“Our intention would be to have the waste removed from that site as soon as possible.”

Congratulating the EPA for its decision to refuse CRH’s licence application, Senator Shane Ross (Ind) said: “It’s very unusual for CRH to have anything refused to it in this country at all.

“They are normally granted what they wish by any agency in the country they apply to. I think it has taken independence and courage for you to do that.”

He called for greater powers for local authorities and the EPA to punish multinationals “behaving in cowboy fashion.”