Wexford County Council has indicated that it plans to take legal action against Dublin City Council following the spreading of untreated sewage on agricultural land in the county.
Councillors at yesterday's monthly meeting were told that the local authority had been in contact with its lawyers over an incident in which sewage sludge was spread on farmland in place of the finished, treated biofertiliser product.
The council has also said that it is taking action to stop Dublin City Council spreading biofertiliser on any part of Wexford until a "protocol" is put in place to ensure that this type of incident does not occur again.
Dublin City Council has entered agreements with a number - believed to be seven - of Wexford landowners to take treated sewage from its sewage treatment plant in Ringsend.
The city council's chief engineer, Michael Phillips, told The Irish Timesthat the city had been disposing of its "grade A biofertiliser" on farmland in Leinster for seven years. In this time, he said, there had been just one case of contamination by raw sewage. While the smell was bad, there had never been any danger to people in the area, as the contamination had simply rendered the grade A biofertiliser into a grade B product.
However, councillors at yesterday's meeting were not convinced, and Fianna Fáil general election candidate Cllr Lisa McDonald sought assurances that the council itself would take action to ensure that such incidents did not recur.
Councillors were also concerned about instances of Wexford County Council spreading sewage on land in the county but were given assurances that this met EU standards.
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