Cork waste dumped in the North

LOCAL authority officials have been asked to investigate how waste from their county ended up being dumped illegally in the North.

The move followed reports in a Belfast newspaper that waste which originated in Co Cork had ended up being disposed of illegally in Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh.

Fine Gael councillor Peter Kelly yesterday asked Cork County Council officials to investigate who had dumped the waste in the North, after hearing that two public representatives on the other side of the border had made complaints to their local authorities.

Cllr Cecil Noble, Ulster Unionist Party representative from Erne East, and Sinn Féin councillor Brian McCaffrey from Fermanagh, both complained about the problem.

Mr Noble said trucks were coming “in the middle of the night”. He claimed that for each lorry-load disposed of legally at the Derry landfill site, a further nine loads crossing the border were being dumped illegally.

Cork county manager Maurice Moloney said licensed disposal companies wanting to dispose of waste across the border had to be issued with a permit and prove where they had deposited it.

Cllr Peter Kelly said it was obvious that those responsible were cowboy contractors.

“I have often wondered why some of the private contractors can charge households as little as 120 for annual collection, as compared to 390 from Cork County Council,” Cllr Kelly said.

He called on council officials to implement a waste audit scheme, which would require all private contractors to record details of the weight of all the waste they collected, and where it was disposed of.

However Mr Moloney said that any illegal dumping on the other side of the border was essentially a matter for the local authorities there.

Meanwhile, the county manager said work on building a 40 million recycling facility in Cork would get underway in November 2004, and should be completed by April the following year.

The new Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) is to be built at Rossmore, near Carrigtwohill in East Cork.

“We acquired a site from Readymix. In the summer we will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, as we have to get a licence from the EPA,” Mr Moloney said.

Discussions with Leeway 20/20, the company which will run the facility, are at an advanced stage, the county manager added.

The bulk of domestic waste generated in the county will be sent to Carrigtwohill for sorting.

What cannot be recycled will then be buried in a landfill which Cork County Council is hoping to build near the village of Bottlehill, despite immense local opposition.

The Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to make a decision on the Bottlehill site on July 19.