Councillors may review decision on incineration

A renewed attempt to get Wexford County Council to put incineration back on its waste management agenda is to be made at next week's meeting of the council.

Wexford is the only county in the south-east not to adopt the waste management strategy drawn up by the South East Regional Authority (SERA) which includes plans for an incinerator to serve the region.

Councillors rejected the strategy by 19 votes to one in January, but now it is claimed the vote was taken on the basis of "misinformation" given to the meeting. This is denied by anti-incineration campaigners.

The new controversy has arisen as a result of an Irish Times report of a meeting in Dublin last month concerning a proposed incinerator at Ringsend, which was addressed by a German environmental chemist, Dr Heidelore Fiedler.

Dr Fiedler, who assisted in the preparation of an EU study on dioxins, said Wexford councillors had incorrectly linked concerns about dioxins highlighted in the report with incineration.

Fianna Fail councillor Mr Lorcan Allen, the single supporter of incineration at the January council meeting, said it was clear that colleagues who spoke about the report had not even read it, and he would be attempting to have the matter reopened at next Monday's meeting.

Mr Allen is the chairman of SERA, which is to begin an information campaign "to show this whole matter of incineration is environmentally friendly".

A spokesman for a New Rossbased lobby group which supplied information on the EU report to councillors has denied that anyone was misled.

Mr Joe Bridges, of the Research and Information Group, said it was true the report - "Compilation of EU Dioxin Exposure and Health Data" - was about dioxins and not specifically incineration. But throughout the report there were references to incineration causing the presence of dioxins in the environment.

For example, he said, the report stated: "The main route for human exposure to dioxins is via the food chain and the main source of dioxins entering the food chain has been atmospheric emissions from industrial pollution, predominantly waste incinerators, which can be transported over very long distances."

"The report is not about incineration but you cannot talk about dioxins without talking about incineration as well," said Mr Bridges.

He also disputed a claim by Dr Fiedler, at the same meeting in Dublin, that background levels of dioxin did not pose a health risk. The report had stated that "exposure to dioxins in the general population in the EU is at a level where subtle health effects might occur", and it was of the "utmost importance" that these effects be assessed.

While further debate is expected, the chairman of Wexford County Council, Mr Sean Doyle, says it is unlikely the issue can be revisited, given that the vote was "so resoundingly" against incineration.

"I know we hadn't all the facts and information when we made the decision, but it's going to be very difficult to get members to change their minds," he said.

Mr Doyle, who did not vote at the January meeting, was part of a delegation of 11 councillors from the south-east who recently visited incineration plants in continental Europe. Members of the group were impressed by what they saw.

They visited sites in Denmark, France and Germany, and returned with a report to SERA which concluded that waste-to-energy plants were "an acceptable way of managing municipal solid waste in Europe".

"While the control of emissions from every plant was paramount, there was no undue concern in any of the communities in the neighbourhood of the plants about dioxin emissions. This was particularly remarkable at the plant near Paris where tilled fields bounded the plant on all sides."

The report also said that the group heard of no problems concerning dioxin emissions created by the plants visited.