Last week's decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue licences for the first two commercial waste incinerators in Ireland has provoked predictable reactions. It was condemned by those who believe that so-called thermal treatment is the wrong approach to dealing with waste, not least because of health and pollution risks, and warmly welcomed by others who regard it as an essential element of waste management.
These diametrically opposed views underline the impossibility of achieving any real public consensus on the issue. The only measure of agreement between opponents and proponents of incineration is that the decision marks a watershed in national waste disposal policy.
The EPA had been considering Indaver Ireland's licence applications for a long time - since December 2001 in the case of Carranstown, near Drogheda, where a municipal waste incinerator is proposed, and April 2003 in the case of Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, where the Belgian-owned company plans to build an incinerator for hazardous and other waste. In deciding to approve these two facilities, the agency said it was "satisfied that operation of the facilities in accordance with the conditions of the licence will not endanger human health or harm the environment in the vicinity". It also stressed that the terms of both licences had been strengthened to take account of concerns expressed by opponents at oral hearings earlier this year on the Indaver plans.
In an effort to engender public confidence in waste incineration, the agency pointed out that each licence requires the use of "best available technology" to comply with EU limits on emissions as well as posting real-time data on the internet and engaging in "extensive communication" with people living in the vicinity of each plant. The EPA's Office of Environmental Enforcement will also "monitor and enforce the licence conditions through a comprehensive and ongoing programme of environmental audits, unannounced site visits and systematic checks on emissions".
However, local opposition in both areas is so strong that the licences are almost bound to be challenged in the High Court, as An Bord Pleanála's planning decisions on Carranstown and Ringaskiddy have also been the subject of judicial review proceedings. Quite apart from fears about dioxin emissions, opponents see the EPA's decision to license the two incinerators as "a recipe for waste generation rather than waste reduction", as Friends of the Earth said, adding: "Once built, they are monsters that have to be fed". However, Ibec, the business representative body, countered this by pointing out that countries with the highest levels of waste incineration - such as Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands - are also those with the highest levels of recycling. It is also a fact, as EPA director-general Mary Kelly noted in 2002, it had by then already licensed 10 incinerators for industry, which were "all working away quietly in the background under very strict regulation from us".