There are "huge doses of hypocrisy" in the debate on waste management as people demand high standards but are not willing to pay for them, according to the Roscommon county manager, Mr Eddie Sheehy.
The issue has been hotly debated in the county in recent weeks as councillors voted on the Connacht Waste Management Plan, which includes a controversial proposal to site an incinerator in the region, most probably in Galway, the location where largest volumes of waste are generated.
Meanwhile people living close to one of two dumps in the county, at Ballaghaderreen, say they are going to step up protests over what they believe is a health hazard in their area.
Mr Paddy McDermott of the Ballaghaderreen Dump Action Committee, who was among more than 100 environmentalists and farmers who protested outside Monday's meeting of the council, said a picket would be placed on the dump in coming weeks.
"We have a letter from Roscommon County Council sent in 1984 assuring us that this dump was only a temporary facility and that they were looking for an alternative site.
"Yet they are still putting rubbish into it, and it is a total disgrace. There is now a mountain of rubbish 30ft high, and the area is infested with rats. The nearest house is only 200 yards away," Mr McDermott said.
Mr Sheehy said he accepted that Ballaghaderreen landfill was "like all old town dumps" which do not meet modern standards. The council now plans to upgrade the Ballaghaderreen dump and use it for another five to seven years until regional facilities included in the Connacht plan are opened.
But the council will not do any improvement work until it is sure of getting a licence from the EPA to keep the dump open. The EPA has said it will only grant a licence if major improvements are carried out; a ruling the council is appealing. Mr Sheehy said the council would have to spend several hundred thousand pounds on the dump to meet EPA standards.
"We are appealing it because we feel that some of the conditions and requirements aren't justified in terms of cost," he said. Meanwhile objectors to the dump have appealed the EPA's decision to grant the licence.
The Dump Action Committee argues that the site is unsuitable. "There are drains on either side of the dump which lead into the Lung river which in turn goes into the Lough Gara lakes where we get our water supply from.
"There are no fish in the river any longer. We used to have angling competitions every year, but they were stopped in the late 1980s because even though the angling club restocked the river on different occasions the fish kept dying. Farmers were blamed for polluting the river but that is nonsense," Mr McDermott said.
Mr Sheehy said he believed the site was suitable because it was remote and the bog was very absorbent.
"We are quite satisfied that the Ballaghaderreen landfill doesn't cause any problem whatsoever to water supplies, and the independent evidence is that our view is right. The EPA did issue a draft licence," Mr Sheehy said.
A detailed study of water quality in Co Roscommon carried out for the Department of the Environment found that 71 per cent of supply was contaminated by human or animal excrement. The conclusion, Mr Sheehy said, was that this contamination was caused by a combination of poorly functioning septic tanks and bad agriculture practices.
Mr McDermott said he would be willing to consider the option of incineration because "nothing could be worse than having an open dump like this seeping into Lough Gara". He believed more efforts needed to be made to encourage recycling.
Mr Sheehy said that even if targets of over 40 per cent recycling were achieved, an incinerator or landfill would still be needed. "That is the stark reality, and those opposed to both thermal treatment and landfills are not living in the real world. The concept of zero waste is very nice but in the real world it is not achievable."
The region-wide approach proposed in the Connacht plan would in many respects solve the problem for Roscommon. This explains the passing of a proposal at Monday's council meeting "rejecting absolutely thermal treatment or incineration and landfills in Co Roscommon".
Charges at Co Roscommon's dumps will increase "very significantly" from January to pay for their upgrading and for measures to encourage recycling.