For 30 years the lead and zinc deposits in the Silvermines mountains have been a mixed blessing for the people of north Tipperary. Hand in hand with the prosperity they brought to the area went a particularly intractable form of pollution that remained there long after the last of the mines shut down.
In the last few months the double-edged legacy of the mines has been brought into sharp focus. While celebrating the news that one of their mines is set to become a heritage tourism centre unique in the Republic, the people of Silvermines are coming to terms with a plan to turn another of the mines into an enormous dump.
In the late 1960s and for most of the 1970s, the village, and its adjoining town, Nenagh, were two of the most prosperous areas in the State. The Mogul mine brought 500 well-paid jobs to the locality.
But towards the end of the 1970s, the mining experience began to turn sour. Lead and zinc prices started to fall and by the early 1980s, Mogul made most of its staff redundant, a decision which had a profound effect on the local economy. In some estates in Nenagh, the breadwinner in almost every family became unemployed the day Mogul closed. While new industries came to the Nenagh area, few of them would make the most of the skills and experience of redundant miners.
Economic devastation wasn't all the closure left in its wake. The mine's tailings pond was a lasting monument to the more unpalatable side of the operation. It consisted of a towering manmade dam of drying liquid sludge, left over from 16 years of lead and zinc mining, which had been pumped from the mine two miles away. It had grown to a height of 40 feet and covered some 140 acres by the time the mine closed. Eventually a hard crust formed on the top of the pond where it proved next to impossible to grow grass. Thick, black, lead-filled dust was carried by the winds up to five miles from the site. Locals suffered streaming eyes, blistered lips and chest complaints. Farmers sometimes had to use masks when tending their land, and several animals died.
The dust threatened the health of locals for years until the problem was counteracted by growing a specially-imported grass on top of the pond, though it still towers over houses in the area.
Recently locals began to believe they had left the worst effects of the mines behind them. Shannon Development stepped up work on attracting tourists to the area, and last year Silvermines village won a landscape award in the Tidy Towns competition. This February Silvermines was back on the front pages of the local papers for the right reasons. A bid to develop a national mining heritage centre at another old mine, the Shallee mine, received a boost when local TD and Minister, Mr Michael Smith, promised to try to secure £1 million funding.
The site, which contains ruins of 19th and 20th-century mines, has a number of features which makes it suitable for such development. A waterfall and spectacular caverns, along with a network of underground mining tunnels and shafts, will form the backbone of the attraction. Visitors, kitted out with hard hat, lamp and battery belt will be able to descend a few hundred feet underground. Above, a multimedia show will illustrate how the area's minerals were formed. But the proposed development of a dump in the old Magcobar mine, less than two miles away, has put a dampener on the news of the heritage centre. Waste Management Ireland Ltd has applied to North Tipperary County Council for a licence to drain a man-made lake in the mine. An accompanying letter notified the council of a future application for permission to develop a "modern lined landfill site constructed to the highest standards".
Waste Management Ireland spokesman Mr Mark Gilligan says the company expects the dump will serve several local authorities in the region and have a capacity of eight million tonnes over its lifetime. He says the need for a landfill site to service the west and the mid-west is "enormous" and, after extensive investigation work, his company has found the Magcobar site to be "eminently suitable for development".
Mr Gilligan says the development will bring jobs and guaranteed income to the area and lead to the upgrading of its infrastructure.
The company is likely to transport waste to the site on the Dublin-Limerick railway line, on a spur used to transport material from the neighbouring Mogul mine. CIE confirms it has discussed the possibility of transporting containerised waste by rail with the company.
Local Senator Kathleen O'Meara has tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister for Public Enterprise on the role to be played by CIE: "It makes no sense that an area with such high amenity value, which is to be the site of a national heritage centre, should be the area where a dump of this nature is developed." She will bring Labour Party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, to visit the site next week.
Mr Smith wants to see the mining heritage centre developed and "nothing done nearby that would make it any bit less attractive.
"There may be sound reasoning in picking centres for dealing with waste, but the main principle of good environmental management is not to transport waste long distances. It should be managed much closer to where it's produced. Otherwise, the people who produce the waste have no incentive to reduce it.
"As well as that, we just don't know what the downstream effects of putting a dump on the side of a mountain would be."
Mr Smith is going to Wales with representatives of Shannon Development to visit projects similar to the one proposed for Shallee.
Mr Patsy Gleeson, a local farmer and veteran of the tailings pond campaign in the mid-80s, hopes the heritage centre will not be jeopardised by the dump project: "I don't have to tell you, people in this area would much prefer the heritage centre to the dump."
