Piles of rotting rubbish could be lining the streets of Dublin next month unless emergency measures are taken, the employers group IBEC has warned.
The comment follows a decision by Fingal County Council to impose quotas and increased charges on commercial waste disposal at its Balleally landfill site from August 1st.
The council said it had no option but to introduce the changes, a 50 per cent reduction in materials disposed, plus a 45 per cent rise in charges, because at current fill rates the site would reach its capacity next February.
The authority has applied for an extension, to allow storage of waste for a further three years. But even if this is granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the extension may not be operable by the time the existing site is full.
Predicting "a major crisis about to hit the capital at the height of the tourist season," IBEC said Balleally was currently the only legal outlet in Dublin for food or food-contaminated refuse.
This meant a stark choice, said Dr Mary Kelly, assistant director with responsibility for enterprise, environment and industry policy: to store rubbish in Balleally, or to store it on the streets. "Contractors will have no alternative but to leave this waste on the streets when their quota is full," she said.
A Fingal County Council spokesman said that given the constraints on it, the authority could have chosen a complete ban on commercial waste, but the 50 per cent reduction was an attempt "to be fair".
The increase in disposal charges reflected the fact that the price of landfill was too cheap, and waste producers were still not giving sufficient consideration to alternatives.
The reduced capacity means that waste contractors will have to find an alternative for half the 100,000 tonnes disposed of in the year 2000, IBEC says, although it adds that food waste from hotels, restaurants and canteens has increased "massively" this year due to foot-and-mouth disease.
Dr Kelly suggested that one possibility still open to the authorities was to temporarily lift the height limits placed on landfill at Balleally. If the licensed ceiling was raised, waste could be stored on top of the existing site until an alternative became available, she said.
