The biggest waste management company in the world is to seek planning permission today to convert a disused mine in Co Tipperary to a massive landfill, which could serve up to nine counties.
The application to develop the former open-cast mine at Silvermines is to be lodged by Waste Management Ireland (WMI), part of the giant US multinational Waste Management Incorporated. The facility, a first in the Republic, is projected to cost £16 million when fully operational. It faces some opposition by locals who feel it could damage tourism.
The venture is supported, subject to planning approval, by Iarnrod Eireann. Up to four trains a day would bring in waste, generating some £1.5 million in revenues for the company a year.
The waste company plans to redevelop a rail spur off the Dublin-Limerick mainline near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, which previously brought mined material away from Silvermines.
It is envisaged that compacted waste would be brought by sealed container to a railway siding less than half a mile from the mine, loaded on special trucks and emptied into the mine which is on an elevated site west of Silvermines village.
The developers said this week they believed their proposal fitted in with the call by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, for regional solutions to the landfill crisis. However, there is already strong opposition. This is led by Silvermines Action Group with indications that most, if not all, county councillors are against the landfill.
The Silvermines community is embracing rural tourism to counter economic decline and decades of environmental damage due to mining. Before the landfill proposal emerged, the Government had committed £1 million towards a mining heritage centre at Shallee, less than a mile away.
WMI is also applying for permission from North Tipperary County Council to drain zinc-contaminated water which has built up in a large mountainside cavity. It had sought to drain the mine last year but was later told there was "a planning aspect" to its application. The local authority had indicated at one point it was about to announce its decision on the drainage. Treated effluent would be discharged into the nearby Kilmastulla River, a salmonid waterway which feeds the Shannon.
According to WMI development manager Mr Mark Gilligan, what was, in effect, a large quarry filled with pollutant was going to be redeemed. It was proposed to "cap" progressively the landfill site over the 22-year lifespan of the facility. "There are big implications of doing nothing."
In an environment impact statement prepared for WMI by consultants MC O'Sullivan, the landfill is predicted to be able to receive up to 450,000 tonnes of non-hazardous mainly household waste a year by its seventh year. The site can take 8.4 million tonnes.
The EIS concludes the development "will not pose a serious environmental risk beyond the do nothing scenario".
