The possibility that an incinerator on a scale never seen in this State could be built on the plains of Kildare is abhorrent to a great many people. What's more, it would have an ability to process hazardous waste.
This part of Kildare is part of the classic Ireland, where the thoroughbred racehorse is most at home. It stands close to greenness on the "distinctly Irish" list. The environmental reality, however, is that a modern incinerator can be located in a housing estate, so it would be foolish to think it could not be situated where it is now proposed.
Modern engineering means incineration is no longer the crude eliminator of waste and generator of toxic materials it once was. Dioxins were just one of a long list of pollutants associated with it. That is not to say it is now a perfectly clean technology without environmental or health risks.
Thermal Waste Management Ltd (TWM), an Irish-owned company, wants to build on a 20-acre site at Boycetown, half a mile west of the centre of Kilcock beside the N4, a "state-of-the-art thermal restructuring unit." For opponents, that reads incinerator, a word which provokes deep mistrust.
The £65 million incinerator would be capable of processing 150,000 tonnes a year of both hazardous and municipal waste delivered by road or rail. Kildare County Council cited 14 reasons for refusing permission. An Bord Pleanala steps into the fray this week with an oral hearing in Maynooth.
There is a view the incinerator will not proceed because the scale of opposition - there were an unprecedented 6,000 objections. The North Kildare-South Meath Alliance Against Incineration is not taken in by such speculation. As environmental campaigns go, it has been professional and has received strong cross-community support. This ranges from owners of some of Ireland's most famous stud farms to local parish priest Father P.J. Byrne, who chairs the alliance. The local commitment is reflected in a campaign fund of more than £200,000.
In a tactical move, the alliance objected to the county council's decision. This means it has full representation at the hearing and can question representatives of TWM, which also objected. Other appellants are Kilcock Community Council and local residents.
The hearing will not be dominated by the rights and wrongs of incineration. It is precluded from considering health implications as the Environmental Protection Agency ajudicates on these (al though this will be changed somewhat with forthcoming alterations to planning legislation).
It will be about proper area planning and development and the suitability of the site, "so we will be concentrating on water, roads, visual intrusion and devaluation of adjoining properties", explained barrister Mr Fintan Hurley, the alliance's legal and scientific committee chairman.
The site will be the issue but also the need for such a facility. A 100,000-tonne-a-year hazardous waste throughput ability, he claims, flies in the face of the EPA national hazardous waste management strategy published last year, which identified a need for a much smaller scale of hazardous waste-processing.
The alliance is fortified by Kildare council's planning report, which came out strongly against the development, particularly aspects of an environmental impact statement. An Bord Pleanala has also ruled on an application for warehouses and a business park in the area, saying it should be for "light industry purposes only", though, ironically, TWM believes this favours its side.
It was never the intention to process hazardous waste only, according to TWM managing director Mr Martin Blake, a former dairy farmer now involved in meat-processing. He set up the company of "four entrepreneurs" but refuses to identify his backers other than fellow director Mr Bran Keogh.
TWM believes it will be able to address fully each of the 14 issues raised by the council and the hazardous waste capacity dispute. It claims the amount of hazardous waste has increased considerably since 1996 and, in any event, its design compares more than favourably with any comparable facility in the US or Europe.
It involves "total treatment", Mr Keogh says, of which incineration is just one part. The process of vitrification eliminates hazardous ash residues. It converts them to usable by-products and cuts out land-filling. Air emissions (where dioxins arise) would be significantly below all EU and WHO limits.
Its vitrification process, rotary kilns and air-pollution controls would involve proven technology to match the best available, backed by the expertise required to build and run it efficiently, he said. "None of this is guinea pig technology," adds Mr Blake.
The payback for Kildare would come with a 50,000-tonne capa city to take its municipal waste, he believes. As for proximity to Kilcock, there was no instance of townlands in Ireland being further than 10 or 12 miles apart, so opposition would surface around any site. Moreover, he insists, with seven incinerators already licensed for industrial use in Ireland, the principle of safe incineration is already established. Opponents, nonetheless, are disturbed by the absence of "siting guidelines" for incinerators such as those for telecommunications masts. If they existed, the alliance says an incinerator would never come to Kilcock.
Having mounted a campaign against it, it says there is "too much talk about the rights and wrongs of incineration" and not enough about alternatives.
Maybe it is not mere speculation that much of Kildare's waste might go to TWM. The county has not joined with others to seek a regional solution to its waste problems. Most of these regional plans envisage some form of incineration in an integrated approach, but such facilities would deal with municipal and light industrial waste, not the hazardous type envisaged for Kilcock. That extra dimension has heightened opposition to the TWM plan.