Residents of the Silvermines area of north Tipperary are still waiting for action to be taken 16 years after a mining waste dump began polluting the environment.
Late last year almost 700 blood tests were carried out on local people by the Mid-Western Health Board, and about 10 per cent of the cattle have also been tested. This followed the death of three cattle with significant levels of lead in their blood.
Soil, water, herbage and silage over a 23-kilometre area have also been tested. The full effect the dump - known in mining parlance as a tailings pond - has had on the area is expected to be documented in a report later this month after it goes to the Cabinet.
The tailings pond began as an artificial lake which had about nine million tonnes of tailings or ore waste, including lead, piped into it from the Mogul Ireland zinc mine which ceased operations in 1982 after 25 years.
In 1984, after the pond dried out, silt began to blow off it in dry weather. A local farmer, Mr Patsy Gleeson, a member of the Silvermines Environmental Action Group, remembers the dust covering bales of hay. "When the dust was blowing, we would have to go behind the bales," he said.
The leaching of waste material through the banks of the pond has also been documented, raising concerns about ground and water contamination.
"Highly polluting leachate is migrating in an uncontrolled fashion from the sides of the TMF (tailings management facility)," an EPA report, published last year, states.
The EPA is involved with the Department of Agriculture, Teagasc, the Mid-Western Health Board, Tipperary North Riding Council and the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources in producing the comprehensive report on the tailings pond and on the legacy of other mine activity in the region.
Mr John Hogan, another farmer in the area, has grown impatient at the lack of progress. His eight-year-old son, Eoin, had a high lead content in his blood on his test last July, although six weeks later the levels had subsided. He describes the tailings pond, an elevated area covering 147 acres, as "a potential risk for all time". Last year's EPA report said Mogul, now part of the mining company Ennex International plc, appeared to have committed an offence under the Waste Management Act in selling the tailings pond to a farmer, Mr James O'Shea, from Kildimo, Co Limerick.
"This being the case, the transfer of the title of the waste to Mr O'Shea is invalid and Mogul/Ennex thus remain the legal owners of the tailings waste," the EPA report adds.
It has recommended the development of "a comprehensive rehabilitation plan" by Mogul/Ennex, overseen by the county council. A risk assessment report was submitted to the county council in July, but members were unhappy with the lack of detail on the rehabilitative work. Discussions continued with Mogul and Ennex and the outcome forms part of the imminent report.
The secretary of Mogul Ireland, Mr David Coyle, said the company was awaiting the report's publication . "In the meantime we have co-operated with anybody who has wanted our co-operation," he said.
Meanwhile, the work begun last autumn was stopped for the winter because of the rising water-table. Dr Jonathan Derham of the EPA said the pond was thixotropic, meaning the material will liquify when heavy machinery is driven over it. "This prevents significant activity during the winter months when the tailings are wet," he said. Senator Kathleen O'Meara, a member of the county council, points out that attempts to seed the tailings pond have failed. Attempts to reseed it were "patchy" and were "a Band Aid solution where surgery is required," she said.
"I welcome the work of the inter-agency group and I look forward to their report but that report will be useless unless it contains recommendations which are clear and strong and have built into them an action programme and a timetable to deal with the problems caused by the tailings pond."