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Dioxin fear drives protest

Fear of contamination from a proposed waste incinerator is driving a protest campaign in Kilcock, Co Kildare. Helen Coburn reports.

RESIDENTS of Kilcock, Co Kildare, claim that a new waste disposal facility planned for the area will handle 150,000 tonnes of hazardous industrial, municipal and medical waste. They say it will attract 52,275 lorries and trucks of rubbish each year, and it will have a huge chimney stack, as high as Liberty Hall, belching out a cocktail of toxic gases, including dioxins and furans, for 24 hours every day

That is the prospect which Kilcock residents say will face them if planning permission is granted to Thermal Waste Management Ltd for an industrial site and waste treatment plant, with a 45 metre vent stack, railway sidings, and ancillary accommodation.

Posters, put up by local residents, mark out the proposed boundaries of the development. Interspersed among these signs stand houses, workplaces and farm buildings. One sign is just by the town's graveyard - an irony not lost on residents. Yards away is a large secondary school.

According to the environmental impact study commissioned by the protesters, this toxic waste incinerator will be `visually obtrusive' and `coloured', with specifications laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Near the site is an estate of handsome red brick houses, many bought by young couples not long ago. Buyers examining the Kildare Co. Development Plan back then would have seen nothing but green fields on the now controversial spot.

High mortgages are common and some locals estimate that the value of their homes has fallen by as much as 30 per cent. And it is not a case of a simple fall in value. According to Chris Morash, a lecturer at nearby Maynooth University, the problem is that if the project goes ahead, these houses may become very difficult to sell at all. "I have heard of two sale deals that have failed to go through and a local auctioneer has confided to me that four house sales in the area lately have collapsed," he says.

Farming worries

Local farmers are even more concerned. Emissions from the incinerator will include a range of toxic substances, including dioxins, furans and metal-based compounds. According to the environmental impact study commissioned by Thermal Waste Management, dioxins are `the most toxic synthetic chemical known - 500 times more potent than strychnine and 10,000 times more potent than cyanide'.

It also states that emissions of chemicals deposited onto soil may be absorbed through skin during contact with the soil.

Referring to the danger to children of soil ingestion, it says that `young children (less than six years) are the most likely receptors for this exposure'.

This suggests that farm families, frequently in close contact with soil, could be at more direct risk of health damage than other local residents. And residents point out that the study concedes that dioxins and furans in soil can `persist for more than 10 years'.

Chris Morash explains: "Dioxins don't disappear; they accumulate in everything and they don't pass through the body. They've got sticky molecules that adhere to other particles - that's why they build up in cow's milk, for instance."

Scientific knowledge about dioxins is incomplete. According to the impact study, the only known human contact has been accidental and these incidents do not lend themselves to rigorous analysis. What is known is that they gather in fatty tissue and can cause skin eruptions and liver damage. Long-term effects are uncertain.

Milk and livestock

The impact study does not include a risk assessment of local milk and livestock. It states merely than these foods will not be a serious risk to the local community because although emissions may be `available for accumulation' by livestock and dairy herds, `modern practices involve transport of stock out of the production area for slaughtering and processing', while the `mixing/treating' of milk also takes place out of the production area.

However, it admits that `cows tend to graze over a wide area and dioxins, once ingested, will concentrate in the fat content of cow's milk'.

What risks this might pose to the wider community seems unclear. A risk assessment on locally grown vegetables was carried out. This states that emissions may accumulate due to direct deposition onto plants or from the soil itself.

To men like local dairy farmer John Curtin, a father of a young family, this makes alarming reading. Fresh from learning how Belgian agriculture has recently been damaged by the presence of dioxins in the food chain, he says that farmers in the area have been encouraging farm organisations to take a firm stand on the issue.

"We're extremely worried and yet we worry, too, about what will happen if the public lose confidence in the food from the area as a result of the controversy," he says.

"We've had fears expressed from farmers as far away as Trim and Naas, and we think that vegetable growers in north Co Dublin ought to be concerned. Thermal Waste may say that there's no risk to food but it's what the public think that matters."

Locals are at pains to stress that toxins emitted by the proposed Kilcock incinerator pose a threat to more than just the local area. Resident Helene McManus points out that there is a growing awareness that people and farmland for miles around will be affected. "The urban district council in Trim, Co Meath, has agreed to write a letter of objection," she says, "and they've called upon the Meath Co. Manager to do the same." Neither she nor Chris Morash is convinced by Thermal Waste Management's assurances that significant emissions will only be carried five kilometres from the Kilcock vent. "We don't agree with that," declares Chris Morash. "We feel that measuring only this limit means that people living in Maynooth, Clane, Celbridge and other surrounding towns won't be alarmed, as they are a little beyond that distance. But we think they should be alarmed. We know from our research that particles can be carried much further than that and, depending on wind direction, they can go almost any place."

The impact study lends some weight to the last claim. An air survey, carried out as part of the study, suggests that in certain conditions, notably when winds come from the north-east or north-west, significant emissions can travel at least 5,000 metres from the site. What is more, the one-hour ground concentration of some of the emissions, having fallen off after approximately 1,400 metres, appears to rise sharply around the 5,000 mark. Residents say that this threatens not only farming and the local stud farm industry, but surrounding towns as well.

Proposed incineration plant at Kilcock `not dangerous' - Blake
P.J. Nolan

MARTIN BLAKE from Navan, Co Meath, is managing director of Thermal Waste Management. He is a former dairy farmer and was national treasurer of the IFA during the 1980s.

He was chairman of Premier Dairies when it was sold to Waterford Foods and subsequently sold out his dairy herd and built the Honey Clover meat processing plant in Navan with his brothers. He also bought a meat plant in Freshford, Co Kilkenny. The Navan plant, mainly used to process sheep, was sold in the past year to Glanbia.

We asked him a number of questions.

Is the proposed incineration plant at Kilcock dangerous?

It is not dangerous. It has been investigated by a number of world renowned experts and their findings are contained in our environmental impact study. Our proposed emission levels are well below the World Health Organisation standards and those standards accepted by the Environmental Protection Agency. We have hired the best people to bring this plan to the highest standards.

How big will the plant be?

The stack will be 40 metres high. The whole facility will be contained within a cladded structure. We are reliably informed that the stack is higher than is necessary, from a safety point of view.

Planning permission

What is the status of the planning permission application?

Kildare Co Council have asked us for another four weeks to consider our environmental impact study. Then it may go to an Bord Pleanala and we will apply for an integrated pollution control licence (IPC) from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Have you had any direct local consultation?

Not in the form of public meetings. We have prepared an environmental impact study and we have put a computer with a copy of our EIS into the local library in Kilcock. We have not consulted directly with the local population and no representatives have sought a meeting with me. We have approached and dealt with all the questions that have been put to us. Our website, with all the information from the EIS, is www.ibi.ie/twm. You must realise that Kildare Co Council has to find a solution to its waste situation. Any waste disposal will have objections. We have waste problems - we must find a solution. It is going to effect whoever it is close to. My factory will be a waste management factory with the capacity to handle 100,000 tonnes of domestic and 100,000 tonnes of industrial waste.

Toxic waste?

Will it handle toxic and hazardous waste?

It has the capacity to do so but it is not specifically a toxic waste incinerator. We do not produce much toxic waste in Ireland; we do produce hazardous waste. There will be two scrubbers at work all the time, so if one needs to be serviced we have total control over the process. I visited a plant in Austria that disposes of hazardous waste and they grow lettuce on the site that is measured and sampled daily. The levels of residue in the incinerator site lettuce are less than one tenth of the residue levels of lettuce grown in the industrial area. Our residue levels would be 30,000 times less than the residue from a chimney burning regular fuel and 5,000 times less than a truck.

How would you feel if someone wanted to build this facility next door to your house?

I would have the exact same concerns as the people in Kilcock, but I would have to deal with the situation in an informed manner. We live in an industrial country. Nobody wants an industry next door but we want the benefits of that industry. There will be objections to all forms of waste disposal, whether it be incinerators or landfill or whatever. I am convinced that our process is very safe and the environmental impact study proves that.

When will the plant be built?