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 (EPA) said it had received more than 200 complaints about serious odours from the site.
Mr Justice Seán Ryan granted an injunction to the EPA yesterday 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, also known as A1 waste, and others over the alleged illegal disposal of 1.1 million 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.
The company last week apologised to local residents for the odours emanating from the facility but blamed the EPA for failing to give agreement to infrastructure and maintenance work at the site.
An advisor to the company Dr Ted Nealon wrote to the EPA earlier this month stating that a lack of agreement on necessary work was preventing the facility from operating in an orderly fashion.
He told the EPA: “refusal to agree to the compost curing infrastructure alone” was causing a “significant loss of revenue to the company, estimated at some €250,000 per month”, with a “considerable negative impact on the operation and development of the facility”.
The improvements would include installing a temporary cap and “gas collection blanket” and the erection of a “curing shed” for compost being processed and landfilled on the site so that it would “not give rise to any gaseous emissions or odours” he said.
According to Dr Nealon, Neiphin Trading had applied to the EPA for an extension to the landfill site in March 2009, but it was still awaiting a decision. Clarification was sought on what additional information the agency required, “but no response has been received to date”, Dr Nealon said. The EPA had declined to comment on the matter while the court action is ongoing.
In December 2008, the Kerdiffstown site was raided by EPA officers accompanied by gardaí, and a number of documents were seized. An associated company, Dean Waste, was also prosecuted by Wicklow County Council for alleged illegal dumping.