Licence awaited for decontamination of 22-acre Gas Company site to begin

Work on decontaminating the land of the former Dublin Gas Company will start as soon as the Environmental Protection Agency grants a waste disposal licence. The estimated cost is £12 million and the land is in the Grand Canal Docks area.

Parkman Ltd, a specialist British consultancy with wide experience of such work, estimated yesterday that up to 150,000 tonnes of material will have to be removed before the 22-acre site can be developed.

The work will start with the construction of an underground concrete retaining wall to isolate the site from its surroundings and prevent pollution of groundwater by the residues of 150 years of town gas manufacturing.

Removing all of the residues marks a change in strategy. In 1990, Bord Gais Eireann was advised that the contaminated material could be sealed and left on the site. The latest thinking favours removal as most effective.

Mr John Jones, managing director of Parkman's environment and water division, said the site contained mainly organic pollutants, including phenols, as well as smaller quantities of heavy metals, such as cadmium and mercury.

He said all of the contaminated soil would be removed to an average depth of 3.5 metres, and pumped onto a ship at Sir John Rogerson's Quay for export to a toxic waste treatment plant, probably in Britain or the Netherlands.

Although Parkman would insist that every scrap of contaminated material was removed, Mr John Carruthers, the project director, commented that the consultants were "not going to send any more of Ireland away than we have to".

The Dublin Docklands Development Authority is taking steps to assure residents that they have nothing to fear. The authority bought the site last year from Bord Gais Eireann at a discounted price - reported to be £18 million.

A freephone "hotline" (1800 200604) has been set up, every home in Docklands has received a newsletter on the project, and there will also be an exhibition from April 14th to 16th at St Andrew's Resource Centre in Pearse Street.

Parkman has some 150 contaminated sites on its books in one form or another, Mr Jones said. One is that of Cork's former gasworks, which is now 90 per cent "remediated", with contaminated material shipped to the Netherlands.

The consultants regard the Grand Canal Docks site as fairly standard in terms of the problems it would present. "We won't be just digging a great big hole here, but no, it's not rocket science even if we might like to think it is."

Their biggest problem is logistical - Bord Gais Eireann has a right to retain possession of a large part of the site until the autumn of 2001, pending construction of a new depot elsewhere. So far no site has been secured.

Mr Peter Coyne, the DDDA's chief executive, said that work should start later this year, assuming a "fair wind" in obtaining the necessary EPA licence as well as planning permission from Dublin Corporation for the excavation.

He said the authority was also working on an action plan for the site, which he described as "extremely important and exciting". It would be developed over several years for a mix of commercial and residential uses.

Mr Coyne said it had a unique location between the Liffey and the Grand Canal Docks, with tourism and leisure potential. "It should be nothing short of a superb development."