THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency (EPA) has adjourned its hearing on the proposed granting of a licence for the Poolbeg incinerator following the submission of a new report on air quality by Dublin City Council.
The new report by the council's expert on air quality and emissions, Dr Edward Porter, has only been submitted this week, although the hearing has been under way since April 14th last, and the council originally applied to the EPA for the licence for the incinerator in July 2006.
The council is seeking a waste licence from the EPA to run the incinerator, having last year been granted planning permission for the facility by An Bord Pleanála.
It said the new air quality report had been submitted because appellants at the Bord Pleanála hearing held in April and March 2007 were not satisfied with the method used to determine air quality in Poolbeg and the surrounding area in the council's original report.
A spokeswoman for the council said it had not been directed to submit the new report and had done so of its own volition, but that Bord Pleanála inspector Padraic Thornton had said that a new report would be beneficial.
"The inspector said that the [ original] report was adequate, but that another one could have had more information," she said.
Both reports have reached the same conclusions, she added.
The reports state that air quality standards in the area are within the limits set down by the EU and that emissions from the incinerator would not lead to these limits being exceeded.
However, objectors to the incinerator claim that Mr Porter's method of interpreting the data collected was flawed. Appellant Joe McCarthy, a physicist and Sandymount resident, this week asked the EPA for an adjournment to consider the new report. The EPA has granted the adjournment until next Thursday when Mr McCarthy will resume his questioning of Mr Porter.
An air quality expert, Dr Brian Broderick of Trinity College, who was retained by An Bord Pleanála to assess the submissions presented to its oral hearing, including the evidence of Mr Porter, said air pollutants in the area did exceed EU short-term limits and that the predicted concentrations had been underestimated. Air quality in Poolbeg was "poor" and had limited capacity for further pollution, he said.
Dr Broderick's report was accepted by Mr Thornton. In his report, Mr Thornton said any predictions that, when the emissions from the plant are added to background levels, air quality limits would not be exceeded, "do not reflect reality, as indications are that the limits are exceeded in some cases when considering the background levels alone". It was unlikely that "realistic modelling" could indicate that all air quality limit values would not be exceeded. However, he said these considerations were a matter for the EPA when deciding whether to grant a licence, and not that any consideration of ordering "more refined modelling" to be conducted in relation to the assessment of air quality should be pursued by the EPA.
