Sir, - Your report "Conference told of need for incinerators to tackle Dublin's waste problem" (February 26th) would have been better sited in the business section as it could justifiably be described as a PR exercise for the incineration industry.
Surely Mr Dempsey's duty is to address the long-term sustainable needs of the populace and not the interests of an industry which feeds off the lack of political will to implement sound waste management procedures. It is clear that the Minister is refusing to use the powers available to him under the 1966 Waste Management Act, an allegation strongly evidenced by both the recent milk bottle debate as well as the refusal to honour pre-election promises to place a tax on plastic bags "to discourage their use" (1997 Fianna Fail position paper).
Evidently the prospect of anti-landfill groups as local political time bombs is something of an ace for the incineration industry. But as with landfill, incineration is an "end of pipe" solution to the problem of waste, which by definition does not address the root causes of long-term waste creation and rather demands a steady supply of combustible material to ensure a return on heavy initial investment.
Depictions of the new generation of incinerators as squeaky clean "architectural marvels" destined to be the new "tourist attraction" may satisfy those whose environmental concern is purely aesthetic, but good-looking buildings do not compensate for increased dioxin/cadmium/lead/ mercury exposure and/or unknown cumulative impacts.
Placing the marvelled Danish example in perspective, a scientist at the University of Roskilde, Rolf Czeskleba-Dupont, linked pig litter deformities to dioxin levels some five times above the Danish acceptable intake level for humans. The pigs in question were fed on grain grown downwind of an incinerator which, after much public controversy, was closed. To those who would counter that the newer models are zero-emission or a hair's breath thereof, it must be said that objective proof of this in the form of reports based on continuous emission monitoring over the life-span of the plant are still being sought for such models.
Interestingly, the consultancy group MC O'Sullivan was a partner in producing the MCCK draft waste management strategy for Dublin, a report which could not authoritatively state how much waste is produced annually in the Dublin region yet nonetheless recommended minimum expenditure of £100 million - or 45 per cent of the total waste management budget - on incineration in Dublin alone over the next 13 years.
As virtually all materials are able to pass through the combustion process, incineration acts as a natural disincentive for recovery or recycling. With a national recycling rate of less than 5 per cent can we allow valuable resources to go up in smoke? - Yours, etc., Tonia McMahon,
Earthwatch waste campaigner, Grove Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6.