I appeared before the Joint Committee on Environment and Local Government in February 2003, when I gave evidence on this issue. I stated then that when Wicklow County Council was carrying out its investigation in December 2002 to January 2003, unlike other investigations, the press was not allowed to see what was there and was not allowed to take pictures. This was unlike what happened at the Whitestown dump, when the press was brought in to see it. This concerned me to such an extent that I had pictures taken of the area when investigations were taking place so that I could see the situation and have a reference when giving evidence to the committee and to the European Commissioner, to whom An Taisce had made a proposal. I had spoken to his predecessor, Margot Wallström, about this matter when she visited Ireland and she was interested in receiving a final report from An Taisce in respect of it.
When I came before the committee in February 2003, I showed members a picture of foundations for a housing estate — Woodleigh — which at that time had not yet been built but which is now completed. I stated that it was in breach of guidelines from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to allow a housing estate within 250 metres of a dump. The reason for this is that landfill dumps produce particular gases, most notably methane, which are dangerous when in proximity to houses. Members may be aware that Kildare County Council had to evacuate houses beside its dump because methane gas had seeped into the houses. According to the EPA, methane gas may be explosive in mixes of between 5% and 15% and can cause adverse health effects in less concentrated forms. It is for this important reason that housing should not be built in proximity to dumps.
The housing estate to which I refer had planning permission and quite legitimately could proceed, which raised the question of removing the dump. I asked Wicklow County Council to order the immediate removal of that dump. It was important that it be removed before the residents who bought houses, some of them off the plans, moved into the houses because the council would then be in breach of Department guidelines. Wicklow County Council chose not to do that but to go down an entirely different route. It decided it would serve a section 55 notice on Roadstone under the Waste Management Act 1996, directing it to build a landfill on top of the drinking water aquifer for Blessington. The latter is a regionally important aquifer. Under Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government guidelines, one cannot, under any circumstances, build a dump or residual landfill on top of a regionally important aquifer. However, that is what Wicklow County Council chose to do instead of doing the obvious, which I asked it to do, namely, to order the immediate removal of the waste under section 55 of the Act to an existing licensed facility, of which several were available to take it.
This was an extraordinary course of action for the county council to take. In July of this year, the EPA inspector stated that the county council's proposal represented a threat to the drinking water of Blessington town, which extracts water directly from the aquifer — sometimes mixed with river water — for drinking. Moreover, planning permission was granted to Cookhill Limited for a large development of over 700 houses plus a hotel and many business premises, with the former expected to extract its water directly on the site, which is beside the Roadstone lands. The hydrology report for Cookhill shows that it sourced the water from Dillonstown and Deerpark, which are on Roadstone's lands, and Newpaddocks, which are the sites of three of the illegal dumps, according to Roadstone's document. The Cookhill development received planning permission to sink wells to supply its development and to source water from Roadstone land. Although that permission was already granted, the county manager should have removed it because not only are the Woodleigh residents directly exposed to the gases but so also are those at the Cookhill development of over 700 houses.
Cookhill Limited is not using the well. In a recent discussion with the company, I told its officials it could not supply its residents from that well because the company knew it was contaminated. When they said they did not know it was contaminated, I told them to check with the county council because an environmental consultant's report sent in as a result of the current application states that the well is contaminated with leachate from the dump and refers to various types of heavy metal contamination. While I will not give the details of the report, if members wish I can list the exact detail of the contamination in the Cookhill well. Despite the report, Cookhill Limited as recently as one month ago stated it had not been informed of the contamination and knew nothing about it.
This is extraordinary. Two major housing developments are now threatened by this problem. However, instead of taking the obvious course of action, Wicklow County Council did the opposite. The county council began detailed physical surveys on the ground in earnest in December 2002. The county manager stated as recently as last Monday that the council went in as a result of rumours of dumping, thereby downgrading the minutes of the county council meeting of 1996 to "rumours". The minutes of the 1996 meeting note that the council was asked whether it could confirm that it was investigating the creation of a private refuse dump, at a disused gravel quarry at Blessington, which was taking Dublin refuse on contract. The meeting was advised that the council was not aware of any private refuse dump but that if the problem was ongoing, it would be investigated. In 1997, the matter was again raised at a county council meeting and minuted.
Each time the matter was raised, a story appeared on the front page of the Wicklow People. Therefore, everybody in Blessington knew the dumping was going on. The local residents asked their local representative to bring it to the attention of the council because while they could not go poking around on private land, the council could do so. The local representative raised the matter at a meeting, which was minuted. Despite this, however, when the matter was brought to the attention of the county manager at a council meeting, he stated that it was only a rumour. At no stage did it lead to a substantial physical investigation on the ground by Wicklow County Council. The matter was raised again at a council meeting in 1998. The local councillor stated that the waste was coming in from the Dublin area in dozens of private vehicles. He referred to the commitment that none would be allowed to come in. The county manager stated that this was a totally inaccurate statement and dismissed it out of hand. The matter was again raised in 1999 and dismissed out of hand.
At approximately the same time, a Mrs. Bailey, a resident living across the road from the Whitestown dump, where 300,000 tonnes of hazardous waste, including hospital waste, was dumped, informed Wicklow County Council on numerous occasions by telephone and letter of the dumping and of the registration numbers of trucks visiting the site. The council did nothing about this at the time and later said it had lost the relevant file. When the media contacted Wicklow County Council, it denied the existence of Mrs. Bailey's letters. When she produced receipts for the letters, it admitted the letters were received but claimed the file was lost. This behaviour did not inspire confidence among local residents. Not only that, but the county council dumped material in both Whitestown dump and on Roadstone's lands. In the case of Whitestown, it sent an engineer to survey the dimensions and soil type of the dump because it had a proposal to buy the dump for itself. While that survey was undertaken by the council and it had received letters from a neighbouring resident detailing the registration numbers of trucks carrying out dumping at the site, it stated it did not know dumping was going on.
The problem became serious in 2002 when a new investigator was brought in by Wicklow County Council. She began finding information that was not evident before, including the location of the Coolamadra, Whitestown, Stephenson's and Roadstone dumps. The problem for the county council at that stage was that since it had dumped at these sites, it was compromised when it went to deal with the dump operators. One can imagine the situation that would arise if somebody who had undertaken an activity then tried to prosecute another person for the same activity. The person threatened with prosecution would threaten to reveal that information if taken to court. The county council is compromised in its dealings with Roadstone and with regard to the other dumps because it did not act on the information given to it on the dumps. When it received details of the dumps, instead of ordering them to be removed immediately in order that they would not present a threat to Woodleigh, Cookhill and the rest of the town, the county council ordered CRH to build a landfill on the drinking water aquifer without planning permission. It used an existing loophole in the law, in which the committee will undoubtedly be interested. Some Blessington residents circulated a petition for the removal of the dumps, and wanted me to ask the Minister to do something about ordering the county council to deal properly with the matter. They wanted him to issue a notice under the Waste Management Act directly affecting this land, but I responded that he could only issue a section 60 notice in general terms. I, therefore, composed a letter to the Minister asking him to use his power to issue orders under section 60 of the Act which would close the loophole and stop dumps being built without planning permission. He issued a section 60 notice but did not deal with that issue. Therefore, there is still a loophole.
We also asked the Minister to appoint an inspector from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to oversee the investigation because the county council is compromised in its handling of the matter and is in a weak position. The Department, on the other hand, is not.
We pointed out that CRH had applied to remediate waste on three of its small dumps, but the county council excavated and found waste in eight separate areas. Nothing was done about the other five, which we find unacceptable. We also find it unacceptable that the investigator was prematurely pulled out after a very short period and that there was no further physical investigation or drilling down on the remainder of the sites. We wanted an inspector to be appointed by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to oversee and report on the county council's dumping, as well as to order an investigation of the five other sites, which the county council has looked at, in order to quantify the amount of waste in them. As it stands, CRH is proposing to do nothing about them and allow waste to leach into our drinking water. The inspector could also order the continued investigation of the site.
As we pointed out to the Minister, this poses absolutely no risk to the taxpayer because, under existing legislation, the cost of such an investigation can be charged against the company or landowner involved. In this case, the company is worth €10 billion and made €1 billion profit last year. In this way, there is no risk whatsoever to the Exchequer in carrying out a proper investigation.
The Minister asked why we did not go to the Office of Environmental Enforcement. I had a meeting with that office and asked why it told landowners they could site a dump on lands where illegal dumpers had already built a dump because the site selection was made by criminals, and in certain instances by organised crime. As illegal dumping is a criminal activity, I can use such terms. Nobody in their right mind would select Whitestown, a European-designated special area of conservation, because it is a spawning ground for salmon on the Carrigower river and a habitat for lamprey, pearl mussel and otters, yet the company which bought the site deemed it suitable. It applied for planning permission, which was opposed by Wicklow County Council which did not want any new waste to be brought in. The company wanted to bring in an extra 1.8 million tonnes of waste. The site selection of a SAC was, therefore, carried out by criminals.
The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government changed the boundaries of the SAC during the course of the appeal but we could not get copies of the scientific evidence that allowed it to do so. This is very dubious and we are making a complaint regarding the change of a European-designated SAC boundary without scientific reports. The change facilitated the applicant in respect of the landfill in Whitestown. Fortunately An Bord Pleanála turned down the application two weeks ago on the grounds that it would still affect the SAC, notwithstanding the boundary being changed, as well as the aquifer. It is not a regionally important aquifer, does not supply drinking water to a large population and is not part of the Poulaphouca reservoir. Nevertheless, it is an aquifer. The aquifer in Blessington is far more vital and regionally important.
Whitestown is an example of site selection by criminals. If someone said they wanted to build a dump in County Wicklow, a competent consultant would first check the location of any regionally important aquifers. The most important aquifer in County Wicklow is located in the entire Blessington area. It is regionally important because it supplies drinking water to Blessington. It was also supposed to supply drinking water to the 700 houses, although it cannot do so now because residents should not be situated on a contaminated well. Any consultant would exclude such a site. However, Wicklow County Council directed CRH to construct a landfill for residual waste, including organic material which would produce leachate, on top of a regionally important aquifer. That was a fundamental error.
This issue is vitally important. "Aquifer" is a strange word and is not used in general parlance, but everybody in Blessington knows what it means. They know it is where they get their drinking water and that it is contaminated. Last May, on the front page of the Wicklow People, the director of environmental services stated that there was no evidence whatsoever of any contamination of the aquifer. The county council claims that we are scaremongering. I used the new EU directive regarding access to information, which only became law in February this year, to request environmental documents from Wicklow County Council which it refused to give me. I did not ask for the name of a guilty person. As a result of its refusal I initiated legal proceedings against the council at European level for breach of the directive.
I also sent the same request to other State agencies and received a letter, dated 2003, from the director of environmental services to CRH. In this letter, the same person who publicly told the people of Blessington that there was no evidence of contamination of the aquifer stated that the risk assessment demonstrated that significant breaches of EPA guidelines regarding contamination of the aquifer had already taken place. The following contaminants had been noted in the groundwater beneath the site: heavy metals, notably barium, lead, manganese, iron and silver; a wide range of inorganic parameters, such as potassium sulfide and ammonia, which are all indicative of landfill leachate contamination; phenols, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, rated as carcinogens, which means that they are cancer causing agents; fuel-related hydrocarbons; and other organic compounds, notably DEHP group 2 carcinogens, yet the same person stated in Wicklow People that there was no evidence whatsoever of any contamination in the aquifer. For all of those reasons, people in Blessington have no faith in Wicklow County Council to handle this investigation.
CRH appealed the recommendation against the building of the landfill and the EPA is obliged to give its decision by 8 December. A new section 55 notice must then be issued. We do not want more delays during which leachate and gases will be produced while they mess around again. We want the Department to appoint an inspector to take charge and appoint consultants to conduct proper digs and decide what must be done to remove the waste. A Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government inspector would not be compromised and would be in a position to robustly ensure all this waste is legally removed.
I will make one final point. The State authorities stated they will not take criminal proceedings against CRH because it is a limited liability company and according to a House of Lords case in company law, one cannot take criminal proceedings against such a company. This is nonsense because the European Court of Justice judgment in the widely reported and important case of Van de Walle v. Texaco in September 2004 states that a company is criminally and civilly liable for waste on its land, whether it is aware of it or not. That case involved a company which did not operate the land itself as it was an independent contractor but the court found it was criminally liable. This contradicts what the Irish authorities have stated.
Although the inspector for the EPA recommended against the landfill, he stated that CRH overstated the amount of waste because it included some contaminated soil, which is not waste. The inspector did not refer to the Van de Walle case which specifically stated that contaminated soil is classified as waste. That is important. According to that European Court of Justice ruling contaminated soil is waste despite what the EPA stated. The EPA is correct to recommend against the landfill but wrong to underestimate the amount of waste there. I do not refer to all of the other waste there.
I wrote to the Office of Environmental Enforcement asking it to intervene and investigate the rest of the waste but it has refused to do so. As that office will not do so and the county council has not done so, the obvious thing to do is ask the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. If it does not do so, based on the recent European Court of Justice decision reported in today's newspapers, Europe will intervene directly. That would be to Ireland's shame. If an agency lets us down, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is a back up and we should use it.
