A major illegal dump on land owned by Irish construction giant Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) in west Wicklow has contaminated the area's groundwater, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said today.
But the EPA said it could be 100 years before drinking water for Dublin at a nearby reservoir would be affected.
The EPA recently rejected a licence application by CRH to move the waste to a new landfill on its lands, and the firm is appealing this decision.
Speaking of the dump in Blessington, EPA director general Dr Mary Kelly told the Oireachtas Environment Committee: "To my knowledge, there is contamination beginning to occur into the groundwater from the site. However it is moving at a very slow pace and it imposes no threat. The figure I have seen is up to 100 years."
Wicklow Labour TD Liz McManus said: "The situation in Co Wicklow is very stark and extremely disturbing."
Senator Terry Leyden of Fianna Fail said that Wicklow, as the "Garden of Ireland" was in danger of becoming known as the "Illegal Dump of Ireland".
Fergus O'Dowd of Fine Gael said local authorities "should be absolutely and totally embarrassed if they're not doing their job".
Ciaran Cuffe of the Green Party claimed that illegal dumps near Blessington in Co Wicklow were upstream from Dublin's major reservoir. He said that over a number of years, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of illegal waste were deposited on CRH lands.
He said that CRH came before the committee in 2003 and "denied all knowledge" of the waste. Frankly I think it an outrageous and incredible statement from CRH that it had no knowledge of when or who deposited that waste on its lands," he said.
Dr Kelly has had several meetings with CRH and Wicklow Co Council and their respective consultants about the waste. She said CRH has applied for a licence in December 2004 to move the waste into a properly managed landfill site on its lands.
The EPA refused the application on the grounds that there would be an unacceptable risk to environmental pollution to a local aquifer, the excavation of the waste could contaminate ground water and cause odours and that CRH did not satisfy EPA that it would dispose of all of the waste concerned.
CRH has a 28-day statutory period to appeal the EPA decision.
PA