THE REPATRIATION of more than 10,000 tonnes of Irish household and commercial waste illegally dumped in Northern Ireland is to begin this week.
The waste is being excavated from a site at Ballymartin, Co Down, and will be deposited at the Whiteriver landfill, Co Louth.
The work is scheduled to take up to 10 weeks to complete. Following the clearance of the Ballymartin land, excavations will start at a smaller site in the county at Newry, which is estimated to contain 2,500 tonnes of illegally dumped waste. This waste will also be transferred to Whiteriver.
The cost of repatriating the waste from both sites has been estimated to be about €3.2 million, almost all of which will be borne by the State.
The full cost of disposing of the waste at the Whiteriver facility, likely to be in the region of €1.3 million, will be met by the State. The Northern Ireland authorities will meet 20 per cent of the cost of excavation and examination of the waste and remediation of the land. The remaining 80 per cent will be met by the State.
The Ballymartin site is the third illegal dump to be excavated under an agreement between the Government and the Northern Executive. A total of 250,000 tonnes of waste from the Republic is estimated to have been dumped at 17 sites across the Border between 2002 and 2004.
The full cost to the State of repatriating the waste is expected to reach up to €30 million and could take more than five years.
Work to clear 28,300 tonnes of waste from the first two illegal dumps at Trillick, Co Tyrone, and Slattinagh, Co Fermanagh, was completed last November. The waste was disposed of at the Ballynacarrick landfill in Co Donegal.
Ministers for the Environment from both jurisdictions reached agreement in 2007 on repatriation of waste illegally dumped in the North to avoid large fines pending from Europe.
The Government was found by the European Commission to have failed to take adequate measures against the export of waste for illegal dumping at unauthorised sites in Northern Ireland. Britain faced fines for failing to prevent illegal dumping in its jurisdiction.
The deal agreed between the previous ministers for the environment, which sees the Irish State pay for all the costs of disposing of the waste and most of the cost of removing it from the North’s illegal dumps, has been endorsed by the European Commission.
