ALL OF Dublin’s “grey bin” household waste will be sent outside the capital for dumping at landfill sites in surrounding counties from next year under contracts worth up to €60 million to the private waste sector.
Dublin local authorities will no longer be able to process their own waste from the beginning of next year following the decommissioning of the last municipal landfills serving the region.
The Arthurstown landfill, the dump used for the majority of Dublin’s waste, which is owned and operated by South Dublin Council but is located about 4km over the county border near Kill, Co Kildare, must close in December.
Balleally landfill, operated by Fingal County Council in north Dublin, is already substantially decommissioned and will fully close next spring.
The local authorities had anticipated these closures for more than a decade, but had expected the Poolbeg incinerator, which was originally due to be operational by this year, would be available. Any time lag between the decommissioning of the landfills and the opening of the incinerator was to have been addressed through the use of a new landfill near Lusk in north county Dublin, which was to open by 2009.
However, the Poolbeg incinerator will not be operational until 2013 at the earliest. The Lusk landfill was only granted a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency two months ago, and has no date yet for construction.
Dublin City Council is now seeking tenders, on behalf of itself, Fingal and South Dublin, from waste companies to process about 300,000 tonnes of household waste annually for the next three years, or until the Poolbeg incinerator is operational. The fourth Dublin local authority, Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown, has entered into a separate contract with waste firm Panda to collect and dispose of its householders rubbish.
The likely bidders for the contracts, which will be worth €40-€60 million over the three years, are the operators of three existing private landfill sites in Kildare, Wicklow and Meath.
Bord na Móna’s waste management arm, AES, which operates the Drehid landfill in Kildare, said it would be bidding for the contract. The other two landfill sites at Ballynagran, Co Wicklow, and Knockharley, Co Meath, are both owed by Greenstar. Greenstar was unable to provide a spokesperson. If contracts were awarded to the operators of these three sites it would double the amount of waste landfilled in these counties.
The tender documents do not stipulate that the landfill sites must be within a certain distance of Dublin, but any bidders must hold a waste licence which would allow them to accept waste from the region. Landfill licences are generally specific to their regions.
