The Environmental Protection Agency has expressed concern at photographs which show barrels of toxic chemicals being buried at a landfill near Enniskerry in north Co Wicklow.
The photographs, taken by a local resident in the 1980s, identify the Killegar site and a quantity of blue barrels being bulldozed at the tip head. The words "methylene chloride" are clearly printed on the barrels.
The photographs have prompted renewed concern for the quality of local groundwater and a call for a full examination of the contents of the dump.
Methylene chloride is a toxic solvent. It is defined by the EPA as a hazardous chemical and its use and disposal, even in the 1980s, was regulated and monitored, an EPA spokesman said. It is normally exported for incineration by specialist firms.
The EPA spokesman expressed concern at the prospect of methylene chloride being sent to landfill. "We would be alarmed at the prospects for local watercourses, particularly if methylene chloride was to mix with a cocktail of other chemicals. It would represent a significant danger", he said.
As The Irish Times revealed last Monday, the EPA has confirmed the presence of groundwater pollution in the vicinity of Killegar dump. The dump is sited on an aquifer about 700 metres from the Glencullen river, from which Enniskerry village gets part of its water supply.
Wicklow County Council said a full report detailing allegations of illegal dumping in each of the sites of which the council is aware would be brought to its members on March 11th. The council's spokesman, Mr Tom Murphy, declined to comment specifically on Killegar in advance of that meeting but he said the council "takes every allegation very seriously".
The Labour party spokeswoman on Health, Ms Liz McManus, a Wicklow TD, has called on the council to carry out its own investigation into the contents of the dump.
Ms McManus said she had brought complaints of hospital waste being dumped at Killegar to the council a decade ago. "The quantities were very small compared to those found in west Wicklow, but now with chemical waste, it is time for a complete examination of what is in that dump."
The council served a section 55 notice on the operators of the site, Landfill Management Ltd, last October, requiring remedial work to be carried out. Under a subsequent agreement with the council Landfill Management hired consultants to monitor the site for three years and agreed to supply the results to the county council.
Efforts to contact the principals of Landfill Management this week were not successful. Their consultants, KT Cullen, White, Young & Green told The Irish Times that information on the monitoring was a matter of client confidentiality. The company later said Landfill Management had no comment to make on the running of the dump.
Killegar dump operated as a private facility from the early 1980s. It was granted planning permission in 1989 by An Bord Pleanála for dry, non-toxic, solid waste. It accepted commercial waste from many Dublin-based operators, the details of which were kept by local residents for about a decade.