Aughinish Alumina pollution terms are eased by EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency has eased some of the terms of an integrated pollution control (IPC) licence proposed for the giant Aughinish Alumina plant in Co Limerick, notably in relation to sulphur emissions, The Irish Times has learned.

The company had claimed the original proposals were so environmentally strict that they threatened the plant's future.

The revised terms, to be issued to the company later today, ease reductions which had been proposed on sulphur levels in fuels used at the facility. However, the EPA is seeking a radical change in the way the State's largest industrial plant utilises heat and power. It is understood this could cost $200 million.

Its owners, the Canadian multinational Alcan, will be given a considerable lead-in time of several years to implement the latest terms, which were established after protracted evaluation by the EPA and consideration of submissions made by the company at an oral hearing last year. Environmental groups and local farmers in the Askeaton area had claimed the conditions were not strict enough.

It is understood the EPA is attempting a "carrot and stick approach" with the company by taking on board some of its concerns over the strictness of proposed sulphur emissions controls and securing a better environmental performance in the long term.

Aughinish Alumina had appealed the proposed conditions for allowing it to discharge pollutants associated with production on grounds of cost. It claimed these were unnecessarily stringent and estimated it could cost up to $40 million to meet the revised standards by 2000.

It also claimed the proposed restrictions threatened the future of a facility which "has always been very precarious in financial terms" - it employs 300 people and contributes £50 million a year to the mid-west economy.

The plant produces about 1.3 million tonnes of alumina a year for incorporation into aluminium and cement. The process involves the generation of sulphur-dioxide gas in boilers and calciners where bauxite is converted into oxide by heating in air. The EPA had indicated it wanted gas emissions from these sources to be reduced by two-thirds.

The revised terms will place considerable extra costs on the company by requiring the establishment of a combined heat and power plant to ensure better energy efficiency and also less emission of pollutants. However, it is expected that a compromise on the sulphur content in fuels and a long lead-in time on other measures will make the package acceptable.

Local farmers, including those who have lost hundreds of animals due to some form of pollution or disease, objected on environmental grounds to the IPC terms, though they did not blame the company for the deaths. The farmers, part of the Ballysteen-Askeaton Animal Health Committee, later withdrew from the oral hearing in protest as they believed the proceedings were "a charade from the beginning".

A spokesman for the company said it would not comment until it had received full documentation on the revised IPC terms today.

A decision on the appeals should have been made by July 19th last. The EPA invoked Article 40 (1) and sought an extension until November 30th. The EPA board spent two days deliberating on the licence in the week immediately before that deadline but then invoked the regulations to have the decision deferred to before tomorrow.

The EPA's evaluation of the licence was complicated by the findings of a study by the National Equine Centre relating to the death of nearly 200 horses since the early 1990s on the nearby farm of Mr Andy Sheehy and Ms Doris Sheehy. It suggested they had died from a rare condition known as granulomatous enteritis.

The Sheehys associated the disease with aluminium deposits found in tissue, though there is nothing to link this with the Aughinish plant.