A decision to locate an organic waste facility at Cloonfad on the Galway-Roscommon border has been delayed following a request by Roscommon County Council for further information on the application. Planners have written to Organic Kompost seeking clarification on a number of issues.
Numerous objections have been lodged against the proposed composting and anaerobic digestion facility designed to accommodate 125,000 tonnes a year of organic material for recycling and recovery purposes.
Mr Seán Corcoran, a spokesman for the Mid-Connacht Environmental Concern Group, said it was hoped the council would not do a U-turn after An Bord Pleanála refused the first application.
A previous application for the proposed development at a five-hectare site in Cloonerkaun was turned down by An Bord Pleanála in 2001. However Organic Kompost submitted a revised application to Roscommon County Council at the end of July.
The environmental group lodged a petition with more than 1,400 signatures against the plans.
It argued that the plant would seriously injure the amenities of the area, and that the sub-standard roads were inadequate to cater for such a development.
It said the revised application was not much different from the original proposal. "It's the same product in different packaging," Mr Corcoran said. "This facility would take the most obnoxious waste you can get such as slaughter-house waste, chicken litter and bellygrass . . . This development is not suitable for a beautiful rural residential area."
Mr James Fitzgerald and Mr Martin Smyth, of Organic Kompost, said yesterday the recycling plant would not have an adverse effect on local people or visitors to the area. They welcomed the request for further information.
"While the majority of the questions and issues raised by the planning authority are of a technical nature," Mr Smyth said, "there are a small number which recognise the importance of maintaining the local environment and landscape as a community resource, something to which we have been committed on an ongoing basis."
Galway East Independent TD Mr Paddy McHugh has lodged an objection saying the facility would severely affect the already poor quality road infrastructure in nearby Dunmore.
"There are roads in Dunmore which are effectively single carriageways, where two trucks simply can't pass," he said. "If this goes ahead, chaos will ensue."
However a statement from another action group, the Connacht Waste Management Lobby Group, said a petition of nearly 600 signatures had been submitted to Roscommon County Council lending its support to the project.
The group said misinformation had led to local people being turned against what they term would be "the country's most advanced recycling project".
The development is proposed as an alternative to current practices of organic waste disposal at landfill sites. It is intended to treat the waste through environmentally beneficial technologies which minimise odour.