Delay in transforming old town dump is frustrating

Most townspeople will remember when almost all of the waste generated in Dundalk was dumped in a landfill site on the Newry Road.

For generations the site over the big bridge was a hive of activity as a constant flow of lorries brought not just the domestic waste generated by households from the town but from surrounding districts.

In addition many other forms of waste such as building materials, industrial waste, and all kinds of refuse generated by the town’s commercial sector were dumped. For a time there was little or no supervision on the site itself, or indeed of the type of waste that was dumped, but in the years before the dump was closed some 20 years ago, more supervision was undertake by the Urban Council who controlled the dump.

Naturally over the years there were grave environmental concerns expressed and residents living in the vicinity of the dump constantly complained about the smell, which, depending on the direction of the wind, could carry to a wide area in the lower part of the town.There was a constant flock of seagulls in and around the dump, and naturally a lot more undesirable creatures that it’s not necessary to list here.

Sadly some years before the dump closed there were the inevitable scavengers, and not just those endeavouring to retrieve anything valuable that was dumped, but at one time, those needing food to sustain themselves found the dump as a source of that food. Over time, as landfill sites were being closed on environmental grounds, the Urban Council in Dundalk had to bite the bullet and make the hard decision to close.

They resisted for a time, not because they knew that it was the right thing to do, but because closure meant the end of the domestic refuse collection by the council itself, and the arrival of the black, brown, and green bins in every household and the consequential cost, a cost that the councillors were reluctant to impose on households obviously because it was not popular with their electorate.

Inevitably however the members had no alternative, but they tried to soften the blow by promising that when the site on the Newry Road was closed it would be developed as an amenity area, with playing pitches for any club interested. That prospect seemed to ease the dissident voices, and while there was a general expectation that the time scale between the closure of the dump, and development of the site as an amenity area would be a number of years, no one expected that it could take decades.

That information emerged recently at a meeting of Louth County Council who now have responsibility for the site, for the members were told that the site would not be suitable for amenity purposes in the short term because gas is still being extracted and monitored on the site. This disclosure came as a disappointment to many who had anticipated that large area of land, close to the river and Dundalk bay estuary, with its uninterrupted scenic views being opened to the public, for use in the immediate future.

Indeed the likelihood is that it may take quite a long time before football can be played on fields, below which domestic waste generated by their relatives is buried.