A planning application to build Ireland's first commercial toxic waste incinerator at Ringaskiddy, in Cork Harbour, is to be lodged with Cork County Council.
Announcing plans for the £75 million facility, Mr John Ahern, general manager of Indaver Ireland, said the plant would operate above existing EU requirements, and would be a state-of-the-art facility causing no environmental threat or health risk. Indaver Ireland is a subsidiary of the Belgian company, Indaver NV.
The company has already lodged a planning application with Meath County Council for a £60 million incinerator at Carranstown, but this plant will not treat hazardous waste. If the Meath planning application is successful, the plant will be operational in three years' time. In the case of Ringaskiddy, assuming planning permission is granted, it will be 2005 before the incinerator is operational. Some 50 people would be employed at the Cork plant. The proposal now being prepared for Cork County Council contains three elements. The first includes a community recycling park, which will be accessible to local people, and will accept a large range of waste, including paper, glass, aluminium cans, textiles and footwear. The second element includes a waste transfer station which will sort and repack industrial, hazardous and non-hazardous waste.
The third element envisages an incineration plant to be built in two phases. In phase one, Indaver proposes to construct a 1,000tonnes-a-year incinerator for hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The hazardous waste would include solvents produced by the pharmaceutical and chemical sector, while the non-hazardous waste would incorporate waste from local industry. In phase two, the company proposes a 100,000-tonnes-ayear non-hazardous waste incinerator, but said the decision to develop this phase would be taken only when the waste strategies of local authorities and the requirements of other waste producers had been defined.
If the planning application is successful, the new plant will be built on a 30-acre site purchased from ISPAT, the Republic's only steel maker, at nearby Haulbowline Island. Over the next few days, some 15,000 leaflets, providing details about Indaver and its activities, will be distributed locally. The company said sophisticated equipment would prevent the emission of dioxides.
Ringaskiddy Residents Association chairman Mr Sean Forde said local people were "dumbfounded" about the proposals.
A community of 200 people would be asked to put up with the movement of up to 80 trucks containing hazardous waste each day, he said.
Ringaskiddy already had a particularly strong concentration of industry, and the road structure there would not be capable of coping with the proposed volume of heavy traffic. He said residents would have to employ a consultant to examine the technical aspects of the proposed plant. "But our immediate reaction is that we are against the proposal. We don't want an incinerator in Ringaskiddy."
In a statement, the Green Party said it was implacably opposed to the proposed incinerator.
Mr Dan Boyle, the party's representative on Cork Corporation, said: "As well as promoting the wrong type of technology, which will do nothing to decrease the amount of hazardous and domestic waste that is being created, this proposal is particularly contemptuous of the Ringaskiddy community, which is now being asked to live with every aspect of the creation, treatment and seeming disposal of hazardous materials in their midst. "It also dishonours many years of promises made to the Ringaskiddy community that no such facility would be located there. If this proposal were ever to become reality, it would create a two-headed monster that will need to be constantly fed," Mr Boyle said.
Indaver NV is a joint venture which is 50 per cent owned by the Flemish government. The other partner in the venture is a consortium of Antwerp-based industries.