Closure of town dump on way but will cost

FEBRUARY 1999

THE days of the town dump on Newry Road are numbered, and it will cost millions to find an alternative means of waste disposal.

County manager John Quinlivan warns a council meeting of a ‘pessimistic road ahead’.

‘It is presumed from discussions at council level that members wish to see the facility closed.

‘I cannot disagree with this aspiration, but I do advise you of sizable financial and other implications, which undoubtedly will rise,’ he says.

In February 1988 the council made an application to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for a licence for the landfill site. Costs incurred to date exceed £100,000.

Cllr Jim Cousins considers they are damned if they keep the dump open and damned if they don’t.

Cllr Séamus Keelan puts the cost of a new landfill site at £3/£4 million but the Department of the Environment won’t allow it.

The Newry Road site is going to close sooner or later. They are still awaiting a licence but it won’t come as the EPA are convinced, as are the department, that such landfill sites have a harmful effect on the environment.

Cllr Keelan says it should be closed for the good of the town.

Cllr Stephen Burns says a lot of the motivation for the closure and upgrading of the site is coming from Europe, and surely funding must come to facilitate this from those who want it most.

However, Cllr Cousins points out only Tralee urban council receives such funding as a once-off.

Alternatives are being looked at, the meeting hears, including private contractors and a regional incinerator.