Incineration déja vu for another community

Incineration is back firmly on the news agenda in Meath this summer with the recent announcement that work is scheduled to get underway in August on the Indaver waste treatment facility near Duleek quickly followed by the announcement that An Bord Pleanala is to hold an oral hearing into the plan by College Proteins to burn meat and bonemeal (MBM) at its existing plant outside Nobber. Thus, another Meath community finds itself pitted against the might and money of industry which wants to get rid of some of our less desirable waste by incinerating it here rather than sending it abroad where it becomes someone else"s problem. Those opposing the Nobber project - and they number many from throughout a wide area of north Meath - will at least be able to learn much from the experience of their counterparts in Duleek who have spent the past decade fighting to halt Indaver building its municipal waste incinerator in their back yard, albeit fruitlessly. While the battle to prevent the combined heat and power (CHP) plant at Nobber is still in its early stages, the long-running battle to stop Indaver Ireland building its thermal treatment facility at Carranstown, outside Duleek, is virtually at an end as the company has announced the €130 million plant is moving into the construction phase which is scheduled to begin next month. It is a bitter blow to the hundreds of locals in the east Meath area who have campaigned tirelessly to halt Indaver in its tracks over a 10-year period. The Duleek facility will consume 200,000 tonnes of waste per year from not only Meath and the surrounding counties, but from further afield as well. It has, as one public representative put it, been given 'carte blanche" to burn rubbish from a large swathe of eastern Ireland in Duleek. One can well understand the cynicism of local campaigners and residents in the Carranstown area when they talk about their own back yard being turned into the 'dumping ground of Ireland", not only as a result of the advent of Ireland"s first waste incinerator opening there, but also because of the amount of heavy industry already operating in what is effectively a rural corner of County Meath. Irish Cement"s Platin works is in process of expanding there and there are plans for a power plant in the area which have been dormant for some years but which may be resurrected again. While Indaver asserts that its facility has been designed to meet stringent operating and environmental standards, this cuts no ice with those who will have to live in its shadow for many years to come and who have genuine concerns, in particular, about potential dioxin emissions from the plant which, they fear, could prove detrimental to human and animal health. That is why the call this week by Pat O"Brien of the No Incineration Alliance for a baseline study of existing background dioxin levels in the Duleek area is one that should be seriously considered. He argues that if an independent appropriate study is carried out now into existing dioxins in the atmosphere before the plant is built, then there will be something to benchmark further studies in the future against once the incinerator is operating. As incineration is Government policy, the least it should do is fund such a scientific report, with contributions perhaps coming from industry in the area. Indeed, this type of report should form part of policy wherever incinerators are to be constructed, including Nobber, if it should come to pass.