Burning issue confronts west Dublin

ANY mention of plans for a new landfill dump leads to the formation of an instant action group to fight it all the way. But this is as nothing compared to the whiff of an incinerator, which is guaranteed to generate much higher levels of public hysteria.

The sensitivity of the Department of Energy in handling its announcement of approval for the £113 million Goddamendy project shows that it is well aware of its potential to fuel hysteria in west Dublin, where a Labour Minister of State, Ms Joan Burton, will be defending her seat.

The vigorous campaigns fought against plans to build incinerators for hospital waste in the Ringsend area of Dublin and hazardous waste at the Syntex (now Roche Ireland) plant in Clarecastle, in Co Clare, offer a foretaste of what lies in store for Goddamendy.

People are understandably fearful that their health will suffer as a result of noxious emissions. The accident at Seveso, in Italy, nearly 20 years ago introduced the word "dioxins" to the environmental vocabulary carcinogenic compounds discharged by badly run incinerators.

But Denmark has been incinerating all of Copenhagen's waste for more than two decades and using the energy it generates to fuel an extensive district heating scheme - with no adverse environmental effects.

Copenhagen's Environmental Protection Agency is one of the consultants recently engaged by the Dublin local authorities to carry out a major study of the capital's waste strategy, and there can be little doubt that "waste to energy" will feature in its conclusions.

The city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, is on record as saying that Dublin must look beyond the controversial landfill site at Kill, Co Kildare, for which planning permission was finally obtained.

The Minister of State for Energy, Mr Emmet Stagg, whose opposition to the Kill dump is well known, maintains that landfilling waste "creates huge environmental problems", both in terms of the operation of a dump site and its long term aftercare, whereas incineration has "positive environmental side effects".

Because waste is being converted into energy as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, these positive effects would include a reduction in emissions of both methane and carbon dioxide - two "greenhouse gases" blamed for causing climate change.

The Minister of State said the proposed "waste to energy" plant would be 15 per cent cleaner than Dublin's Poolbeg power station, which is now fuelled by natural gas.

He also said it could be used for district heating, if necessary, via a pipeline to Blanchardstown.

It qualifies as a "renewable energy" project under a recent EU redefinition of "biomass" - normally understood to include short rotation forestry to include "waste to energy", which Mr Stagg himself engineered by having a Green Paper on the issue adopted during Ireland's presidency.

He denied that yesterday's announcement had "jumped the gun on the strategic waste study of the Dublin area, insisting that it would be "complementary" to the work of the consultants. Assuming that it wins approval from the relevant authorities, Mr Stagg said the operators of the Goddamendy plant would be supplying electricity to the national grid under a 15 year agreement.