A group campaigning against the proposed Indaver Ireland incinerator at Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, yesterday lodged its appeal against the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to license the facility, claiming the licence differs from the original planning application.
The Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (CHASE) has also requested the EPA to hold an oral hearing into the granting of a waste licence to Indaver for the €93 million hazardous waste facility.
It also claims the licence is non-compliant with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and EU legislation.
CHASE spokeswoman Ms Linda Fitzpatrick said Indaver originally submitted incorrect waste categories to the EPA. It then changed the characterisation of the waste, and moved non-hazardous wastes into its proper hazardous category.
According to CHASE, the EPA draft licence permits burning of 300,000 tonnes of waste between two incinerators at Ringaskiddy, but this exceeded the tonnage specified in the original application which was for a 100,000-tonne hazardous waste incinerator.
It has also objected to Indaver being granted a licence for a municipal waste incinerator for which planning permission has yet to be applied, and accused it of "an underhand attempt to slip a municipal waste incinerator in through the back door".
The group also claimed that Indaver's offer of a €12.5 million bond to fund any clean-up in the event of an accident was "completely insufficient".
It further claimed that new data following recent flooding in Cork showed that the proposed site for the incinerator to "be clearly unsuitable under WHO guidelines, and the site should be reassessed using the new data".
However, an Indaver spokesperson rejected CHASE's claims, and said the company had never specified the exact tonnage of hazardous to non-hazardous waste, while the EPA had included some incorrect waste categorisation codes in its draft licence.
The spokesperson said it had not sought planning for a 100,000-tonne municipal waste incinerator at this stage because Cork City Council and Cork County Council had not included incineration in its integrated waste strategy.
However, it had included the municipal waste incinerator in its application for a waste licence as it made more sense to include an environmental impact study of both facilities, rather than submitting one now and one later.
Indaver denied the €12.5 million bond was inadequate, and said that was the figure which it had come up with after taking all liabilities into consideration. The EPA had deemed it sufficient when granting the draft licence.
Indaver also rejected CHASE's comments regarding recent flooding. It said no drainage system had been put in place on the site but, once it was installed, flooding would not be an issue.
