Locals' warning to illegal dumpers after massive bog clean-up

Emlagh bog underwent a massive two-day clean-up last weekend as part of An Taisce's National Spring Clean 2010 and now local residents are warning potential dumpers that they will not get away with littering in the area again. Up to 20 local residents and farmers worked together on both Friday and Saturday to remove nine giant skips full of rubbish from the site. A large number of tractors and heavy machinery turned up to help move some of the heavier, bulkier items of rubbish, which included a burned-out caravan. Emlagh Bog, located between Wilkinstown and Carlanstown, was heavily littered as the area had been used for illegal dumping for years and the items which were removed at the weekend included household rubbish, abandoned sofas, mattresses and bags of dirty nappies. Local farmers and residents supplied tractors, trailers and diggers to gather rubbish and Meath County Council provided the skips. Stephen Kenny, one of the organisers of the clean-up, said the event had been very successful and they were now determined to prevent the bog being used for dumping in the future. "There will be patrols in the area and CCTV monitoring," he warned. Mr Kenny said a "serious amount of machinery" was brought to the clean-up by farmers and builders and it wouldn't have been possible without them. He said the project would continue on a couple of evening this week just to finish off the work. "The people who turned up worked very hard but it was disappointing that there hadn't been more volunteers. A lot of people turned up on Sunday to walk and enjoy the bog, but who hadn't turned up on Friday or Saturday to help in the clean-up," he said. He paid particular tribute to James Bradley, Terry Flanagan, Desmond Kenny and Brendan Smith for their hard work. Mr Kenny said that, four years ago, they held a major clean-up but it wasn't as successful because it had been a manual effort and they were unable to move some of the bulkier items. National Spring Clean is Ireland's most popular, well recognised and successful anti-litter initiative. Now in its 12th year, the campaign encourages every sector of society to actively participate and take responsibility for litter by actually conducting clean-ups in their own local environment. It traditionally takes place throughout the month of April. National Spring Clean has been operated by An Taisce since 1999 in partnership with the Department of Environment and the size and scale of National Spring Clean has grown steadily and significantly over the years.