Increased intake would see landfill closed 16 years early

The landfill facility operated by the Greenstar company at Knockharley would be closed 16 years earlier if its proposal to increase the acceptance of waste there from its present 132,000 tonnes a year to 400,000 tonnes was accepted, its head of landfill operations told a Bord Pleanala oral hearing this week. The company has made an application to Bord Pleanala for the increase in tonnage. When the oral hearing opened in the Marriott Hotel, Ashbourne, on Monday, the inspector conducting the hearing, Breda Gannon, was told that Greenstar would present submissions from eight experts. Meath County Council is represented at the hearing (and is also representing Louth, Cavan and Monaghan Co Councils), and local residents also have a strong presence at the hearing, which is scheduled to end today (Wednesday). Margaret Heavey, head of landfill operations with Greenstar, said the company"s proposal was to fill the already permitted landfill footprint at Knockharley more quickly and to close and cap it in an earlier, more sustainable, timeframe, returning it to agricultural and woodland amenity use. It was not proposed to extend the landfill or intensify the operations already permitted. 'The plan contains no increase in the total final height or size of the landfill footprint,' she said. Under the Greenstar proposal, the footprint would be full by 2017 and capped, closed and returned to agricultural land by 2019 instead of 2035 at current intake rates - 16 years earlier than currently planned. It was the comopany"s contention that up to 60 per cent of the proposed increased tonnage was inert, stable or construction waste with minimal organic content and a negligible potential for odour nuisance. 'The development proposed to separate the landfilling of biodegradable wastes from construction waste and, consequently, lower the potential for odour generation that exists when organic waste is co-disposed with gypsum plaster found in demolition rubble,' Ms Heavey said. It is proposed to accept 15,000 tonnes of stabilised biowaste/compost in 2009, rising to 100,000 tonnes in 2016 in line with European, national and regional policy and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines to reduce biodegradability in landfills. The company also argued that filling the landfill faster increased sustainability, with less leachate and more efficient gas to energy. It was also stated that annual payments from the company to local community funds would increase from €250,000 per annum to over €750,000 per annum if its proposal went through. Greenstar described to the hearing the type of residual wastes it would accept under its proposal - short- to medium-term disposal of stabilised biowaste from mechanical biological treatment processes; other stabilised secondary wastes from the processing of non-food bearing construction, commercial and industrial wastes; other residual wastes from the mechanical processing stages of municipal, commercial and industrial waste recycling; non-hazardous residual wastes from other waste recovery processes; soils and rubble and other wastes from the construction industry. In a submnission by Morgan Burke, on behalf of Greenstar, it was stated that there was a need in the combined Dublin and north-east waste regions for 60,000 tonnes additional residual disposal capacity in 2009, rising to 145,000 tonnes in 2011 and to over 500,000 tonnes in 2014, assuming waste plan targets were met. In a letter from RPS Consulting Engineers to Greenstar last May, it was stated that Fingal Co Council, acting on behalf of the four local authorities in the Dublin region, was examining the requirement to secure commercial arrangements to acquire waste disposal capacity in the short- to medium-term for non-hazardous household and commercial waste arisings generated within the Dublin region. Waste disposal capacity would be required to cater for approximately 500,000 tonnes per annum in the short-term, potentially reducing to approximately 150,000-300,000 tonnes per annum in the medium-term.