Building a hazardous waste incinerator in north Kildare would seriously impair visual amenity around Kilcock, devalue properties and lead to serious traffic problems, local TD Mr Emmet Stagg has told a planning hearing.
During the second day of a Bord Pleanala hearing at the Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth, Mr Stagg said there was a strong case for retaining the site west of the town for purely agricultural purposes, as it was prior to 1998, and not zoning it for industrial uses.
He alleged the developers of the proposed £65 million incinerator, Thermal Waste Management Ltd (TWM), had submitted an initial application aimed at getting the zoning of the land at Boycetown changed.
A "material contravention" of the Kildare county development plan was then passed by county councillors and this, Mr Stagg claimed, had facilitated the company's application for the incinerator - TWM is appealing Kildare County Council's decision to refuse permission for the incinerator but has outline permission for a business/light industry park in the area.
The planning appeals board should not allow the development to proceed in such circumstances, he said. Having obtained 43 documents under the Freedom of Information Act, he had established that a series of meetings had taken place (mostly in early 1998) between TWM and officials from the council and the Department of the Environment. Also, the TWM managing director, Mr Martin Blake, had met the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, at a constituency clinic.
If councillors had been informed of the meetings, "which they were entitled to be", Mr Stagg claimed they would have rejected proposals for a material contravention on the site - they subsequently excluded the possibility of having an incinerator in the county under the terms of the Kildare Waste Management Strategy.
The Kilcock location did not meet established "site suitability" criteria, he said. Applying these, the incinerator should be somewhere in Dublin such as the M50 route industrial area. This was more sustainable as transportation would be reduced and 95 per cent of its waste would come from the Dublin area.
"With a chimney stack higher than Liberty Hall, and a main building that is 15 storeys high, unless the appellants propose planting Californian redwoods, this development will seriously injure visual amenity and devalue properties," he said. Initially, the company said 40 per cent of associated traffic would go through Kilcock, now it was saying none would pass through the town. "There's no way TWM can guarantee this."
Mr Stagg said he was told by the Minister for the Environment that there was "no current policy commitment to a national hazardous waste incinerator", contrary to the TWM view. Equally, Ireland was not going to be compelled by EU directive to build such a facility. He would be making a submission to the Environmental Protection Agency calling for guidelines to be introduced on locating incinerators away from houses and schools.
A project manager for TWM, Mr Dermot Harte, said he was not aware of any claim by the company that the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, and the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, "had backed the project".
Mr Harte told Mr Fintan Hurley, for the North Kildare-South Meath Alliance Against Incineration, he knew Mr Dempsey had denied such a claim. Mr Hurley noted that Mr Dempsey had described it as "a libellous claim". He added that he would supply evidence to this effect.
