No location for an incinerator in new plan for mid-west

The mid-west area's draft regional waste management plan has failed to identify a location for an incinerator, despite the fact that two of the region's three main landfills are to run out of capacity in the next four years.

The failure of the existing plan to make any progress on the issue of thermal treatment earned a stiff rebuke last year from the minister for the environment at the time, Martin Cullen.

The largest landfill in the mid-west at Gortnadromma, in west Limerick, is to run out of capacity next year, while Kerry County Council's Muingnaminnane landfill has four years remaining.

Both Limerick and Kerry County Councils have applications with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to extend the licensed capacity of each landfill.

A consultant with RPS MCOS Ltd, Larry O'Toole, has told Clare County Council's special policy committee (SPC) that the new plan will not identify a location for thermal treatment.

A feasibility study on options was completed last August and confirmed that thermal treatment was required for the region.

Mr O'Toole said a location would depend on proposals by the private sector.

The proposed incinerator will treat between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes of waste each year.

Members of the SPC committee were told that the region's waste had almost tripled from 441,000 tonnes in 1998 to 1,129,000 in 2003.

The main factor driving the dramatic rise is a 500 per cent increase in construction and demolition waste to an annual 732,000 tonnes.

Mr O'Toole said that the Limerick-Clare-Kerry area, with a population of 411,000, had the highest recycling rate at 26 per cent of municipal waste in the country.

The targets of the existing waste plan project that by 2014, 37 per cent of waste will be recycled, 59 per cent will be thermally treated, with the remaining 4 per cent to be used as landfill.

Currently, 26 per cent of waste is recycled, with the remaining 74 per cent used as landfill.

The drawing up of a feasibility study of thermal options last August was the repeat of a similar exercise in 1999.