A waste company has been restrained by the High Court from accepting further deposits for part of its landfill site near Naas after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had received more than 200 complaints about serious odours from the site.
Mr Justice Sean Ryan granted an injunction to the EPA today against Neiphin Trading, which operates the landfill site at Kerdiffstown near Naas. The order applies pending the outcome of full legal proceedings.
The judge had heard EPA inspectors detected strong odours from landfill gas and composting activities at two sites on the facility.
The EPA is taking separate court action against Neiphin Trading and others over the alleged illegal disposal of 1.1m tonnes of waste in a separate part of the Kerdiffstown landfill.
In opposing the order, Neiphin said they had put proposals to address the problems and complained an injunction would effectively shut down its business and could threaten the jobs of 106 employees and 50 contractors.
Mr Justice Ryan said he did not accept an injunction would put the company into a condition of extreme financial peril but even serious impact and any potential devastation had to be weighed against the public interest in being free from environmental pollution.
The evidence before him at this stage was the landfill is causing a nuisance to a number of people who live in the area, he said. The company was failing to comply with its obligations and was causing the problems of environmental pollution.
There was no right to run a business contrary to law or in such a way as to create either a public or a private nuisance, he added.
The court heard about 200 residents had complained about odours emanating from the landfill and one man had said in an affidavit it was so unbearable on January 31st that he began vomiting.
Neiphin has apologised in a letter to its neighbours for odours emanating from the facility but has blamed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the continuing problems.
Dr Ted Nealon, environmental adviser to Neiphin Trading Ltd - also known as A1 Waste - said the EPA had “failed or refused” to give its agreement to “various infrastructure and necessary maintenance works” at its Kerdiffstown site.
“Neiphin Trading Ltd are concerned that the failure by the EPA to agree various proposals which would improve the environmental performance of the facility is preventing them from operating [it] in an orderly fashion,” he said in a letter to the EPA on February 3rd.