North Kildare and south Meath were in danger of losing their extremely valuable bloodstock industry if a hazardous waste incinerator was permitted to proceed in Kilcock, Co Kildare, according to the owners of two large stud farms in the area.
In a submission to a Bord Pleanala hearing in Maynooth yesterday, the owners of Ferrans Stud, Kilcock, and New Abbey Stud, Kilcullen, said there would be severe employment consequences for the greater area and potentially disastrous consequences for their businesses.
Aside from any issue of physical damage to thoroughbred horses from the incinerator, such a development would seriously affect the value of bloodstock, said their legal representative, Ms Elizabeth Crilly, of McCann Fitzgerald solicitors.
An engineering consultant, Dr Martin Rogers, said the process of selecting a site for the development of a national hazardous waste treatment incinerator at Co Kildare was flawed and failed to consider adequately other sites.
He said rather than commencing with a wide range of potential sites and using a predetermined decision methodology to choose the most appropriate, developers Thermal Waste Management had started with the preferred site.
Giving evidence on behalf of North Kildare-South Meath Alliance Against Incineration, Dr Rogers, a site selection expert, claimed TWM had undertaken minimal comparative analysis of other potential sites to justify its selection of a site just outside Kilcock.
TWM is appealing Kildare County Council's refusal on 14 grounds of a planning application for the £65 million facility.
A planning consultant, Dr Brian Meehan, said if an incinerator was to be located in the middle of a business park, it would not attract the kind of high-quality or high-tech jobs Kilcock was hoping for. "You will get a dump attracting a dump."
The traffic impact from the development would lead to major congestion and peak-hour tailbacks of up to two kilometres in Kilcock, according to Mr Seamus MacGearailt, of Roughan and O'Donovan, consulting engineers, who appeared on behalf of the alliance. He claimed the Environmental Impact Study had underestimated peak-hour traffic "by a factor of at least three".
A trustee of the alliance, Father P.J. Byrne PP, of Kilcock, said people in the area had shown remarkable restraint and responsibility in the face of a hazardous waste incinerator proposed so close to their schools and homes.
