Carlow County Council is taking court action later this month over what officials claim is the unauthorised storage of treated sewage sludge from Dublin on a farm near Tullow.
The treated sludge, which comes from Dublin City Council's sewage treatment plant in Ringsend, is marketed as Biofert and used as a fertiliser on tillage land in the area.
The council is claiming that the large sheds at Thornhill, near Tullow, Co Carlow, do not have the required planning permission to store the material, following a decision by An Bord Pleanála in July 2002 to refuse the facility planning permission to operate as a commercial facility.
The sheds, which are 150,000 square feet, have planning permission for agricultural use, and as such the council has claimed the owners are confined to storing grain from their own farm, and materials for exclusive use on the site.
However, the sheds have been used to store the treated sludge for the past three years under a sub-contract to the operators of the Dublin sewage plant.
The plant, which was built at a cost of over €300 million, treats waste water for the entire Dublin area. The solid waste from the facility is then treated through a heat process to remove bacteria and other pathogens, and its high nutrient content makes it suitable for use as a fertiliser. The plant was built by a consortium of private companies under contract to Dublin City Council. This consortium has in turn sub-contracted out the handling and sale of the treated sludge, or Biofert, to Quinns of Baltinglass. This company has contracted out the storage of the material to the Thornhill site.
Last July, Carlow County Council issued the owners of the site, Mr Tom and Mr Patrick Nolan, with an enforcement notice to "cease all commercial activity on site". This included the "storage of fertiliser material under contract agreement for use of lands outside your landholdings".
A Carlow County Council spokesman confirmed that the council had taken enforcement proceedings to the district court. The owner of the site, Mr Tom Nolan, declined to comment in advance of the court proceedings.
The council confirmed it had received a number of complaints about the smell in the last 12 months, and that environmental officials were monitoring the situation, although there was no evidence that it was a persistent problem. A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said if the enforcement proceedings were upheld, the operators would find new storage facilities.