Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of domestic, commercial and hazardous waste have yet to be moved from four illegal dumps, three years after they were discovered, Wicklow county councillors heard yesterday.
Council officials told the councillors that they had encountered difficulties in getting the owners of most of the sites and those suspected of the illegal dumping to deal with the waste.
Councillors were also told that there were serious concerns about the potential impact of illegal dumps on drinking water at lands in Blessington, owned by CRH subsidiary Roadstone, which said it had been unaware of the illegal dumps until they were discovered by the council.
The details emerged during an emergency debate by councillors to discuss proposals by Roadstone to deal with up to 115,000 tonnes of illegal waste on its site by removing recyclable and hazardous material, and burying the remainder in a one-off landfill.
The proposals have met with considerable opposition from locals in the Blessington area, who protested outside the council chambers yesterday afternoon, along with residents living near other illegal dump locations.
The proposals were approved by council staff.
During the meeting, councillors from west Wicklow, including Mr Edward Timmins, Mr Tommy Cullen and Mr Jim Ruttle, outlined their opposition to the proposals, and called for all of the waste to be removed.
Mr Timmins said it was the only way to restore public confidence.
Wicklow county manager Mr Eddie Sheehy said that Roadstone had worked closely with the council to find a solution to the dump problem, and that it was the the only landowner to date to have done so in relation to the illegal sites.
The company had to date paid the council more than €550,000 towards the cost of investigating the site.
Mr Sheehy also said that the council had recently been paid €200,000 by another illegal dumper for the investigation cost in relation to another site at Coolnamadra.
However, he said that a High Court order from 2002 to remove the waste, some of it hazardous medical material, had yet to be complied with.
The council has also issued a warning notice in relation to Whitestown, the site of the largest illegal dump, estimated at over 250,000 tonnes, he said.
The council has also received no definite proposals in relation to the clean-up of another large site in west Wicklow - Stevenson's Quarry.
Mr Sheehy added that the site of the Roadstone dumps was on an aquifer, which supplies drinking water to houses in Blessington.
This was "a matter of serious concern to us", he said.
However, he pointed out that continuous testing of water supplies had resulted in no discoveries of contamination to date, although he acknowledged there could be the possibility of some ground water pollution on the site.