John Gormley

Today was the deadline for submissions to An Bord Pleanála on the proposed incinerator at Poolbeg. My submission was handed in together with two volumes of supporting documents. Click here to read the full submission in Rich Text Format (RTF).

I’m told that more than 3,000 people have objected to the proposed incinerator. Let’s hope that a combination of people power and unanswerable arguments against the incinerator will win out in the end.

An extract from the introduction to my submission is included below:

Introduction

An Bord Pleanála has been asked to consider an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposal to build a massive municipal waste incinerator on the Poolbeg Peninsula, in the heart of Dublin Bay. This proposal marks the culmination of a process to procure a municipal waste incinerator which began almost a decade ago, and which has been opposed at every turn by the Green Party. More significantly, it has been consistently opposed by the communities most immediately affected by the proposal. The Board is now in a position where it must decide whether this incinerator will be imposed on these communities, and whether the fatally flawed waste management strategy pursued by the Dublin local authorities will be imposed on the citizens of Dublin.

I ask the Board to support the proper planning and sustainable development of Dublin by rejecting this proposal. In my submission, I hope to show that the proposed incinerator is unnecessary, prejudicial to the development of a proper waste management strategy, severely damaging to the amenity of local communities and to terrestrial and marine ecology. I also hope to show that the EIS is inadequate, and that the proposal is not consistent with the relevant public policy context.

In this submission, I have attempted to limit myself to treatment of matters that the Board can legitimately consider under the terms of reference set down for it in law. I have also tried to maintain a reasonably sober tone so as not to detract from the substance of my arguments. However, I think it is appropriate at the outset to make the strongest possible statement of my total opposition to this proposal. It is my view, and the view of the Green Party, that this proposal will set back progress on sustainable waste management in Ireland by decades. It will damage the health and amenity of local communities, and it will benefit only those private companies who are associated with it.

The choice faced by the Board, and by the Dublin region, is between a waste management policy which allows for progress in respect of the two most favourable waste management options – waste prevention and waste minimisation – and an “integrated waste management strategy” which locks the region into a model whereby the waste streams produced by households and businesses must remain constant throughout the 25-year life of the incinerator, in order for it to function efficiently, and for the project to be economically viable. In asking the Board to choose the former, I am not asking it to adopt Green Party policy. I am simply asking it to uphold the hierarchy of waste management options, which is already the cornerstone of every relevant national and regional policy

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Documents, Incineration, Irishtown, Ringsend, Sandymount. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.