There are no easy solutions to the waste crisis. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the demand for landfill. Frank McDonald outlines Dublin's problems.
Dublin is facing a "severe shortage of landfill in the short to medium term", with total capacity likely to be exhausted by the end of 2004 unless steps are taken to extend it, according to consultants Dr Peter Bacon and Associates.
However, the diversion of some of a very large volume of construction and demolition waste which was being dumped at Balleally, the huge landfill site on Rogerstown Estuary would provide some additional capacity for other waste.
Construction and demolition waste, which accounted for up to 50 per cent of total waste deposited in Balleally, is now accepted for cover only.
The volume of commercial and industrial waste has also been sharply reduced by hefty charges imposed by local authorities.
These severe limits on non-household waste have cut the overall intake by half to 230,000 tonnes per annum, effectively extending Balleally's lifespan.
A planned extension of the site, if approved, would lengthen its life for another four years.
Planning permission for the Dublin local authorities to dispose of baled municipal waste in a former quarry at Arthurstown, near Kill, Co Kildare, expires in July 2004. It may also be extended for a further four years to complete the landfilling operation.
However, because the Dublin regional waste management plan does not include Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, the Bacon report says there is "major uncertainty about how and where waste produced in Dublin city and county will be disposed of" in future.
The plan itself concludes that there is an urgent need for the provision of disposal capacity in the region, but this issue is not addressed in specific terms.
For example, a new landfill is proposed for the Fingal area but a site has not yet been chosen.
Though the plan recognised that "significant disposal difficulties" were likely to arise, these are "worse than anticipated", according to Dr Bacon.
"There is also a high reliance on the assumption that there will be timely provision of thermal treatment."
His report predicts thermal treatment "will not be available for a number of years and is still subject to uncertainty". It will not come on stream until at the earliest 2005 in the north-east and the Greater Dublin Area, and from 2006 in Cork.