The oral hearing on the proposed "super dump" at Silvermines, Co Tipperary, due to open in Nenagh on Monday, has been postponed, An Bord Pleanala announced yesterday.
In a statement, the board said it had decided, in response to a request from the developers of the landfill project, Waste Management Ireland (WMI), to defer the hearing. WMI is appealing against Tipperary (North Riding) County Council's decision to refuse planning permission. No new date was set for the hearing, which was expected to last three days.
WMI, it is understood, has indicated it needs time to evaluate fully the decision announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency that it proposes to reject on eight grounds the company's application for a waste management licence - which is crucial to the development proceeding.
WMI development manager Mr Mark Gilligan said the company requested deferral of the oral hearing to facilitate adequate preparation of objections against the EPA decision not to grant a waste licence.
"We are absolutely not pulling out of the process," he insisted.
The company, none the less, is believed to be examining if it is possible to overcome the EPA's concerns, notwithstanding its option of appealing the agency's verdict.
The landfill issue dominates life in the mountainside village of Silvermines.
As local people see it, they are already living beside a 150-acre toxic waste pond and a disused opencast mine filled with polluted water.
And then they are told that one of the biggest landfills in Ireland is about to be developed there. They have mounted an intensive campaign against it. On the way into the village, there is a plethora of signs - pasted on to telegraph poles, tied to gates, and nailed to the gables of houses, declaring, "No dump in Silvermines".
The community has suffered a number of environmental problems.
In the mid-1980s there were toxic dust blows from a tailings pond where mining sludge had dried out after mining operations ceased. More recently a number of cattle died in the region and post-mortem examination results showed elevated levels of lead in their bodies.
Arising from these incidents, an inter-agency group comprised of representatives of Government departments and local authorities investigated the levels and effects of lead on the region. In its report, which put forward 40 recommendations to help rehabilitate the area, the group outlined a number of measures to make the area safe.
These related to human health, animal health, farming practices and the future monitoring of lead in the region.
"We have been left with the scars of mining and the imposition of a landfill is a dire intrusion on an honourable community and beautiful landscape," said Mr Eamon De Stafort, public relations officer for the Silvermines Environmental Action Group [SEAG]. Anti-dump activists hope to put environmental problems behind them. At the Bord Pleanala oral hearing they will argue against the WMI plan to develop the £16 million dump in Silvermines.
Local people's fears about a landfill development in the area were somewhat allayed following an Environmental Protection Agency announcement earlier this week, proposing to refuse a waste licence for the WMI landfill. "We are not celebrating too much because of the proposed EPA decision as we have the oral hearing coming up soon. We will be backing the county council planning decision every step of the way," said Mr Eamon Dooley, vice-chairman of SEAG.
WMI, which is owned by the world's largest waste company, based in the US, was expected to have a team of experts from Ireland and England giving evidence at the planning hearing, while North Tipperary County Council had a legal team and expert witnesses to defend its decision not to grant planning permission to the waste company.
SEAG was due to be represented by senior and junior counsel, local people, An Taisce and a number of expert witnesses including Mr Jack O'Sullivan, an environmentalist, Mr Eugene Daly, a geologist, and Dr Tom Collins, a lecturer in sociology at Maynooth.
"We have employed experts to speak on behalf of the community. I am 100 per cent sure that we will win," said Mr Dooley.
Meanwhile, WMI development manager Mr Gilligan said the company's appeal team would "concentrate on planning issues" during the oral hearing. The landfill saga began late in 1998 when WMI applied to Tipperary (North Riding) County Council for planning permission to develop a "super dump" and a discharge licence to drain an old opencast mine near Silvermines.
They received permission to discharge the mine water but were refused planning permission by the local authority to develop the landfill site. Both of these decisions have been brought to the appeal stage and oral hearings are scheduled. A date for the appeal against the decision to grant a discharge licence has yet to be set.
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