The construction of a municipal incinerator to burn Dublin's domestic and commercial refuse is among the key recommendations of a major review of the capital's waste management strategy, The Irish Times has learned.
The review, being finalised by consultants, does not identify a specific site nor does it endorse the plan, announced last February, to build a "waste-to-energy" plant north of Blanchardstown.
Earlier this year, Dublin's four local authorities appointed the MCCK Group, consisting of Irish and Danish consultants, to review their waste management policies, which rely heavily on landfill and to recommend alternative options.
Dublin generates so much waste that up to 30 per cent of it is dumped in unregistered landfill sites outside the metropolitan area. The volume of waste is rising by 3 per cent per annum.
Mr Kim Maskell, from Denmark, who is involved in the review, said the situation was very bad and likely to worsen because of the scarcity of landfill sites and the increasing cost of waste disposal.
Local authorities must decide what strategy to adopt to deal with this growing crisis. Even with the Kill dump in Co Kildare now in operation, the consultants believe that a strategy based exclusively on landfill is "unrealistic".
The report's final draft will be submitted shortly to a steering committee representing the senior management of Dublin Corporation and Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councils.
The involvement in the study of the Copenhagen Environmental Protection Agency and COWI, a Danish firm of engineering consultants, virtually ensured that incineration would feature prominently among the options for the 21st century.
Copenhagen has incinerated its municipal waste since the early 1970s and uses the heat this generates to fuel district heating schemes. The city's two incinerators now form part of a sophisticated waste management system in the Danish capital.
Incineration, or "waste-to-energy", is also favoured by the Government. Both Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats proposed it as an alternative to landfill in their environment policy documents issued before last June's general election.
On October 10th, the Minister of State for Energy, Mr Joe Jacob, told the Dail that waste-to-energy projects were "the way forward" and the Government was committed to supporting policy in this area.
He was responding to his Labour predecessor, Mr Emmet Stagg, who wanted to know if the Government was supporting the £113 million incinerator/power station at Goddamendy, near Blanchardstown, which he had announced last February.
This project, a joint venture by ESB Power Generation and a US company, Foster Wheeler Power Systems, is intended to burn up to 500,000 tonnes of waste per year, producing 30 megawatts of electricity for the national grid.
Mr Stagg said he was concerned that delays in a review by the European Commission of the project would result in the loss of £7.5 million in EU aid allocated for the Goddamendy scheme.
The promoters are awaiting the outcome of this review before making a formal planning application to Fingal County Council or completing their environmental impact study. They also need a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mr Stagg called on Mr Jacob to take a team to Brussels to press the Commission to approve the project. He also said there was a need for a similar incinerator in south Dublin to burn a further 500,000 tonnes of waste per year.
The former minister said he had "no doubt" about the environmental aspects of waste incineration. "Such projects would remove the need for massive mega-dumps on a scale never seen in Ireland before now," he declared.
When he announced the Goddamendy scheme, Greenpeace warned that waste incineration produced "poisonous dioxins" and other toxic substances.
