A criminal investigation is under way into the illegal dumping of waste, as sites are unearthed around the Border, reports Liam Reid
Drive a mile down a small boreen in the remote Border area of south Co Monaghan, and you will find Ireland's latest illegal dump. The site, an eight-acre boggy field just a few hundred yards from the Co Fermanagh border, is located in Coleman's Island, and contains more than 2,000 tonnes of waste, from as far away as Cork.
The island is almost surrounded by Co Fermanagh, and can be accessed only by the Clones-Cavan road which twists in and out of Northern Ireland. The only means of access to and from the island from the South is through the North.
In the past, the economy of this Border area was dependent on the road's straddling of the Border, as the disused petrol station on the Co Fermanagh side in Leggykelly illustrates.
The relative remoteness and the terrain also made the area a natural hotspot for smuggling for most of the 20th century. The small fields, drumlin hills, streams and lakes can make it very difficult to figure out precisely where the Republic ends and Northern Ireland begins.This area's geographical anomalies are being exploited by illegal dumpers, who pose the same problem for the authorities as smugglers did 20 years ago.
Despite the widely held view that illicit waste operators are feeling the pinch of increased enforcement, illegal dumping is flourishing in the Republic - the dumpers have merely become more sophisticated.
While the nature of the illegal activity has changed, industry figures maintain that between 500,000 and 750,000 tonnes of waste is disposed of illegally in the Republic each year, more than 10 per cent of the 6.4 million tonnes of commercial, domestic and construction waste generated in the country.
The illegal activity comes in many guises. The least serious offences include the dumping of construction and demolition waste in sites without a permit, posing a limited environmental threat. Some unlicensed operators illegally collect waste from businesses and households and dump it in remote fields. This kind of trade is concentrated in the greater Dublin area.
However, there is mounting evidence that a major illegal trade in waste involves Irish operators sending thousands of tonnes of material outside the State. Under various scams the waste is listed as recycling material, but ends up being dumped, often in licensed landfills in Northern Ireland and Britain, an activity that is absolutely illegal (see panel).
Northern Ireland's Environment and Heritage Service has told The Irish Times it suspects a large volume of waste is passing through Northern Ireland from the South with forged documentation. Ultimately, much of the waste is destined for landfills in Scotland and England, where the charges are a fifth of those in the Republic . The rest is being dumped in illegal sites in the North. There are now more than 20 sites, the majority in the Border region of the North, where thousands of tonnes of the Republic's waste have been unearthed.
Illegal waste activity is a problem that the Irish authorities readily acknowledge, and the Environmental Protection Agency is starting a major clampdown on illegal waste operators. Its newly established Office for Environmental Enforcement (OEE) has ordered a major study of the nature and extent of illegal waste activity. The office is also launching an enforcement network and enlisting the help of the Garda to target illegal dumping.
Despite these initiatives, many within the waste industry believe that the specific conditions of the sector have created the environment in which illegal activity continues to flourish. A major problem is the lack of landfill space. Many local authorities have hiked their landfill charges , opening the way for illegal operators to reap huge profits.
Cork County Council was charging commercial waste disposal firms €230 per tonne for dumping in its three landfills. This compares with €100 in Co Donegal, and less than €50 in some sites in the North and Scotland.
Another problem is that the financial and other penalties are too limited to be a deterrent. The majority of those convicted of illegal waste activity have been fined by the District Court. The fines and costs are often less than €10,000, compared with a tax-free profit of €3,000 or more that can be made for each 25-tonne load of waste that is dumped illegally.
Enforcement has in the past been patchy, with few resources and little effort on the part of many local authorities to bring illegal operators to book.
Each local authority is effectively the enforcement agency for waste collection and disposal in its area, apart from larger waste management facilities, such as landfills, which are licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
However, as highlighted in a recent article in The Irish Times, many local authorities do not have adequate information, required under law, as to how much waste firms are collecting, or where they are disposing of waste.
The Republic's enforcement problems were highlighted last month, when it emerged that hundreds of tonnes of mixed waste, destined for recycling in India and Hong Kong, were stopped at Antwerp and Rotterdam late last year and earlier this year. The case generated embarassment for the Irish authorities when it emerged the consigments did not have the proper clearance needed and were therefore illegal shipments, yet were allowed to leave Ireland without being checked.
The level and extent of the illegal dumping activity can be seen in one site in the North, a composting facility in Cookstown, which was accepting illegal commercial and household waste for landfill between September 2002 and March 2003.
The Irish Times understands that at least 10,000 tonnes of waste from 13 counties was found by investigators at the site. The information was passed on to the 13 local authorities last year. There have been no prosecutions as a result of this information, although the EPA took a separate successful prosecution in relation to one of the Southern firms sending waste to the site.
The nature and the problem of the illegal activity is also highlighted by the Coleman's Island dump in Co Monaghan. The 2,000-plus tonnes of waste is believed to have originated mainly in counties Cork and Waterford. It was collected by licensed operators, and handed over to a Border-based haulier. The waste was then transported more than 200 miles, and buried in the middle of the night in holes excavated by a digger.
The cost of landfilling that waste in a legal site in Munster would have been around €460,000. Instead, the haulier and the waste collectors will have shared that money in clear profit, as the customer would be paying the full commercial rate.
To its credit, Monaghan County Council has taken a hard line on illegal dumping in the county, and against hauliers suspected of illegal activity, impounding their trucks on some occasions. However, it has no powers to prevent or inspect waste activity in the Munster area, where the problem originates. That is the responsibility of the local authorities there.
The Irish Times has established that two of the waste collectors now at the centre of the Co Monaghan investigation have previous convictions for illegal dumping, but were able to continue operating. The haulier, who is suspected of widespread illegal dumping, was granted a waste collection permit by Dublin local authorities.
Established firms operating within the regulated system are concerned that rogue operators are damaging the image of the industry, and undercutting legitimate operators who are playing by the rules.
One of these respected firms, Greenstar, is the largest waste disposal company in the Republic. A subsidiary of National Toll Roads, the company was formed when its parent company bought out a number of established firms in the late 1990s. It is now one of the three major players with a turnover of €80 million.
Its chief executive, Steve Cowman, believes that between 500,000 and 750,000 tonnes of waste is being disposed of illegally in the Republic each year, translating into revenue of between €40 million and €100 million per year for illegal operators.
"Some of the evidence of illegal activity is anecdotal, but the difference between the waste being created in Ireland and the waste being disposed of or recycled is significant." Cowman and others in the industry point to the latest figures for the waste in the National Waste Database, showing a difference of more than 400,000 tonnes between the amount of commercial and household waste estimated to have been generated in 2001 and the amount that went to landfill or was recycled.
The EPA cautions that other valid and legal reasons for the difference might be an over-estimation of the waste that some houses and businesses could be generating. Privately, senior EPA staff also believe that the illegal waste problem is much less than 500,000 tonnes per year, and that illegal operators are being squeezed by tougher enforcement. However, Cowman is adamant that the illegal activity is still high. "There's very significant profit to be derived from illegal activity. The penalties don't match up with the profit."
Donal Marron, a waste management expert with White Young Green environmental consultants says that many of the illegal operators have yet to come to the notice of the EPA or the local authorities.
"A lot of the enforcement focus has been on the contractors who have gone through the licensing process. But there are a lot out there who are operating without licences or permits and getting away with it," he says.
Illegal waste activity has been widespread in the Republic since the mid-1990s, beginning almost as soon as the sector came under stricter regulation. New European legislation led to the closure of many substandard local authority landfills, at a time of increasing demand because of the boom. In response, some licensed operators began using illegal sites, such as those uncovered three years ago in Co Wicklow. These sites were operated on a large commercial scale, involving huge quantities of waste and large profits for those involved.
The scale of what may have been occurring was indicated in 1998 when a waste management plan for Dublin revealed that more than one million tonnes of waste was going missing every year. The capital was producing 2.3 million tonnes of waste each year, but official records showed it was disposing of only 1.3 million tonnes. Despite these startling figures, there was no investigation at the time.
The level of past illegal activity and the identification of old illegal sites is another aspect of the study commissioned by the Office for Environmental Enforcement.
To date, the only council to have tackled such sites in any meaningful way has been Wicklow County Council, and what it uncovered was shocking. While council officials logged about 100 illegal sites in Co Wicklow, investigations have focused on five major ones, where an estimated 630,000 tonnes of commercial, domestic and hospital waste was dumped illegally.
Working with the EPA, the council brought in gardaí from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) to help with the investigation. Headed by Supt Pat Brehony, a team of up to 10 gardaí have been working on the case for the last two years. Charges have been brought against a number of people in relation to the largest site, Whitestown, near Baltinglass. A file on another major site of illegal dumping owned by Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) near Blessington, has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Management of CRH has previously said it was unaware of any illegal activity.
Investigations are nearly complete at two further sites in west Wicklow, Coolnamadra and Stevenson's Quarry. A further investigation is under way into a 100,000 tonne site at Killegar in Enniskerry. The Garda will also investigate claims from the co-owner of the Killegar site, Paddy Redden of AAlert Waste, that he paid bribes to officials at a Dublin landfill so that he could dump waste there illegally. His brother, Richard Redden, a garda, is the co-owner of the Killegar site, but has said he knew nothing of illegal waste activity.
The council has also secured a High Court order against Louis and Eileen Moriarty, and their company, Swalcliffe Ltd trading as Dublin Waste to carry out remediation work on the Coolnamadra site, which will cost at least €2 million. Rubbish including hospital waste collected by Dublin Waste was found on the site, although Louis Moriarty has said he had no knowledge of the illegal activity, which he claimed was carried out by a subcontractor. Similar court orders are expected to be sought for other sites.
With the exception of a quarry site next door to Russborough House, Wicklow Council does not believe there are other sites where commercial and domestic waste was dumped illegally on an industrial scale, according to Philip Duffy, a senior official in the council's environment department. He also believes that the large-scale dumping has ceased in the county. "People are still illegally dumping, but not on the commercial scale that we saw a few years ago."
While the commercial-scale illegal dumping may have ceased in Co Wicklow, concerns remain that there are many sites around the country yet to be uncovered. A lot of waste which went missing from Dublin has still to be accounted for and, with the exception of Co Wicklow, there have been no significant sites uncovered in other neighbouring counties.
"Baltinglass is over 40 miles away from Dublin, and the trucks were going down there," said one local authority official. "It stands to reason there are other sites a lot easier to get to from Dublin. Some local authorities just haven't looked."