Plans to build an incinerator to dispose of most of the south-east's waste have drawn an angry response from residents, who claim the proposals have not been fully explained to the public.
The proposal is part of a 20-year waste-management strategy drawn up by consultants for the South East Regional Authority (SERA), which is seeking new ways to dispose of 350,000 tonnes of waste produced in the region every year.
Nearly all this waste is currently dumped in landfills, and SERA says national and EU laws require new approaches and higher standards of waste management.
The strategy, recommended by the consultants Fehily, Timoney & Co, covers a range of measures for dealing with waste, including recycling and prevention.
But the central element of its plan is the establishment of a single incinerator within an area which takes in part of south Kilkenny, east Waterford and west Wexford, referred to as the SKEWWW box.
Already one commercial concern, a French-led consortium which includes Iarnrod Eireann and an ESB subsidiary, ESB International, has expressed interest in siting the incinerator at the Great Island power station near the Wexford village of Campile.
That initiative has had to be put on hold until tenders for the project are invited by SERA, but residents in the area have condemned the proposal and the way the issue has been handled by the authority.
They claim SERA has engaged in euphemistic language about the strategy, avoiding the word "incinerator" in its publicity material and instead referring to concepts like "integrated waste management facility based on the principle of waste-to-energy".
The residents, who have formed a Research and Information Group, have serious concerns about the health and safety aspects of the strategy.
They point to experience elsewhere, including northern France where high dioxin levels were found last year in milk produced on farms in the wind path of incinerators servicing the city of Lille.
"There are implications for farming, for fishing and for tourism, and especially public health," says one of the group, Dr Michael Prendergast.
But the group says its most immediate concern is that the public is not being properly informed of what's involved.
It points out that the second of two SERA newsletters about the waste-management strategy, dated January 1999, sought submissions from the public by mid-February.
They claim many households did not receive the newsletter until February 15th.
SERA's director, Mr Tom Byrne, says he "takes the point" about the late distribution of the newsletter, but rejects the claim that the public has been excluded from the consultation process or is being kept in the dark about its contents.
He points out that since the consultants' study was published in January last year by the Minister of State, Mr Dan Wallace, public notice of the start and completion of the final draft report was placed in all local newspapers in the region.
In addition newsletters, including one last July, have been circulated to all postal addresses in the south-east, and regular briefings have been given at public meetings of SERA.
As well, a consultative forum representing "a wide cross-section of public, private and community interests" was briefed by the consultants on four occasions.
The Research and Information Group, however, says that even public representatives it has spoken to are unaware of the full contents of the study and rely on the SERA newsletters for information about the strategy.
"You don't get a picture of what's proposed without reading the actual report," says another group member, Mr Joe Bridges, a secondary school science teacher.
The residents say that while the incinerator option is the favoured one in the study it is only one of four options outlined by the consultants, including safer and more environment-friendly approaches.
The overall aim of the strategy is to reduce by 25 per cent the amount of waste which must be "managed" by local authorities; the rest would be incinerated, leaving residual ash to be disposed of in landfills.
Apart from their difficulties with large-scale incineration, the residents say the proposed strategy has inherent contradictions. Large amounts of waste would need to be "supplied" on an ongoing basis to make an incinerator viable, so the incentive to pursue other methods such as recycling and home composting would be reduced.
Mr Byrne disagrees, insisting that the rising costs of waste disposal in the coming years will make other options more desirable for everyone.
The strategy has already been approved by five of the region's six local authorities, and is likely to be debated by Wexford County Council next month.