The promoters of a highly controversial hazardous waste incinerator near Kilcock, Co Kildare, are preparing to lodge an appeal to An Bord Pleanala against Kildare County Council's decision to refuse planning permission for the £65 million project.
Thermal Waste Management Ltd (TWM), which describes itself as an Irish-owned company, wants to build the proposed "state-of-the-art thermal restructuring unit" on a 20-acre site at Boycetown, half-a-mile west of the centre of Kilcock village, on the N4.
The incinerator would be capable of processing up to 150,000 tonnes of both hazardous and municipal waste, delivered by road or rail. The promoters say their project would create up to 250 jobs in construction and comply with all relevant environmental standards.
The Kildare county manager, Mr Niall Bradley, cited 14 reasons for refusing permission, including a contention that the traffic it was likely to generate would endanger public safety, particularly to children attending local schools, one of which is close to the site.
The decision also said that the plant would be premature, pending the formulation of a national policy on hazardous waste disposal and that its scale - more than half the height of Dublin's Liberty Hall - would be "out of character" with the rural setting of Kilcock.
It would be "seriously injurious" to the visual and recreational amenities of the Royal Canal, which runs alongside the site, as well as overloading the local road network.
The water supply in the area was also "insufficient" to cater for such a large development, it said.
The county council received an unprecedented 6,000 objections to the project, according to Mr Mark Teevan, spokesman for the North Kildare-South Meath Anti-Incinerator Alliance, a limited company formed by local residents to spearhead their campaign against it.
Though "delighted" by the council's comprehensive refusal, Mr Teevan said the alliance would also be appealing to An Bord Pleanala to ensure that it would have full rights to be heard. He estimated that it would need to raise £100,000 to cover the costs of an appeal.
Last week £10,000 was raised from a "golf classic" and similar events are planned. The parish priest of Kilcock, Father P.J. Byrne, who chairs the alliance, has held an anti-incinerator prayer vigil and there have been two large protest meetings in the village.
The campaign is being run by a steering committee, supported by a scientific and legal committee and a fund-raising committee. It also has a public relations group, a full-time office in the village and its own website on the Internet - www.kilcockincinerator.com.
Mr Teevan said the local objectors believed that any national hazardous waste management facility should not be run privately. "If it has to be in private hands, we should be told who they are, and we are very interested in finding out who is putting up the money".
TWM's managing director is Mr Martin Blake, a former dairy farmer who was the IFA's national treasurer in the 1980s. He is now involved in the meat-processing industry, with factories in Navan, Co Meath; Athy, Co Kildare, and Freshford, Co Kilkenny.
He has declined to identify his financial backers. "That's a business decision," he told the Leinster Leader last month. "I'm involved with a number of associates but I'm not naming them at this time. They are not involved with waste-management or waste creation."
Asked if he had received any support from the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, who represents North Kildare, or the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, who is a TD for neighbouring Meath, Mr Blake said: "They promised me absolutely nothing."
TWM said the incinerator had been designed on the principle of "Waste in - no waste out". It would use a vitrification process developed by the US Vortec Corporation would reduce the residue to an inert substance which could used for road-surfacing and ceramic tiles.
"Incineration and waste-management are not the villain industries of the new millennium," the company said in a recent full-page advertising feature in the Leinster Leader. Incineration was commonplace elsewhere in Europe and had been shown to work, TWM claimed.
Nonetheless, it accepted that it had a tough battle on its hands, with a spokeswoman conceding that local people were "up in arms" about the project. Even if An Bord Pleanala were to grant permission, it would still need a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The company's website is www.ibi.ie/twm