The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has threatened to prosecute Kildare County Council for failing to investigate and prevent illegal dumping at the edge of a nature reserve of international importance. Liam Reid reports.
In the first major warning of its kind issued by the EPA, it has ordered the council to carry out an immediate investigation into the site, a sand pit on the edge of Pollardstown Fen, which has been used as a dump since the early 1990s.
It has also ordered the council to ensure that all activity ceases at the site and that building rubble and other unauthorised waste, dumped there since 2001, is removed.
If the council fails to comply with the direction, it could face fines of anywhere between €3,000 and €15 million.
In the direction, made under new powers given to the EPA last year, the council has been ordered to carry out a series of measures, including the "investigation, identification and quantification of the environmental impacts and risks of environmental pollution" at the site.
The 300-acre fen is the only alkaline fen of its kind in Ireland and is home to a rare form of whorl snail. The construction of the M7 Kildare bypass was delayed by two years after it had to be redesigned to ensure the fen would not be drained of water by the road. The delay added an estimated €75 million to the original cost of the road.
Four years ago the EPA prosecuted site owners Mr Thomas and Mr Patrick Munnelly over illegal dumping. The following year the owners were given a waste permit to take top soil on to the site as part of a process of remedying the illegal dump.
However, the EPA has received information that while no commercial or household waste has been dumped since 2001, the illegal dumping of builders' rubble has continued at the site.
Yesterday, local PD senator Mr John Dardis, who lives three miles from the site, criticised the council for "a total lack of action at this site for years. There was so much concern about the effect of the motorway, yet at the same time there was no concern about an illegal dump at its edge."
Yesterday a spokesman from the council said they were actively pursuing the issues raised by the EPA direction.