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Incinerator will result in cash windfall for community

Thursday, 29 January 2009

ONE of the Southside’s most outspoken critics of the incinerator planned for the Poolbeg Peninsula has decided to engage with Dublin City Council in a bid to secure any benefits for the local community arising from the facility. Last week Dublin City Council met with representatives of the community in Ringsend and Irishtown to discuss the ‘Community Gain’ proposals put forward by the local authority and waste incineration company, Covanta, who will build the facility. At a meeting held in the Clan Na Gael Fontenoy GAA Club in Sean Moore Park, city council officials – including assistant city manager Matt Twomey – said the local community would benefit from an e8 million ‘Community Gain’ fund when construction on the plant begins. The e8 million is just part of a e20 million fund which will also see the council contributing e500,000 annually to the community for the next 25 years. The plant will generate enough energy per year from the waste to provide electricity for 50,000 homes and district heating for another 60,000 homes. A Community Liaison Committee will be set up to administer the fund.  It will have 10 members, including three local community representatives, three city councillors, two city council officials and one representative from the waste to energy plant. It will have a majority of members from the community and the committee will control how the funding is spent.  Dublin City Council will put in place an independent monitoring scheme but the community representatives will have the controlling interest on the committee.    Damien Cassidy of the Ringsend, Irishtown and Sandymount Environmental Group, a fierce opponent of the incinerator, said he had put his name forward to be considered as a potential member of the Community Liaison Committee. “I am totally opposed to the incinerator but I believe that they are going to go ahead with it, regardless of our opposition, and if that is the case I would not like to see Ringsend, Irishtown and Sandymount left out of the gains which will happen,” he explained. One of Mr Cassidy’s initial objections to the incinerator was that the operation of the facility would cause traffic chaos and have an adverse impact on the health of local residents by adding 30,000 extra truck movements per annum to the area. “I called for the carbon monoxide coming from the trucks to be minimised either by putting them through a tunnel on the proposed Eastern Bypass or by using the toll bridge tunnel that currently exists,” he said. Mr Cassidy has also called for local people to be employed in the construction of the plant. The plant has received full planning permission from An Bord Pleanála to treat 600,000 tonnes of household and municipal waste annually that is not recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency granted a waste license for the plant and a licence is being sought from the Energy Regulator to provide energy generated by the plant to the national grid.