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Culture or Capitalism:
The story of community opposition to hazardous development
and its alternatives in the south of Ireland: Part One
by Eanna Dowling
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Attempts to promote the south of Ireland as a premium environmental and cultural tourism destination are being undermined by twin incinerators planned for Ringaskiddy near Cork City. Campaigners claim that dioxin and other emissions from the two incinerators will destroy perceptions of east Cork as a quality destination and food- producing region. Prevailing winds from the Atlantic would disperse emissions over east Cork.
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The Cork Harbour Area for a Safe Environment (CHASE) is the campaigning organization directly opposing the incinerators in Cork. Their campaign focuses on the dangers of toxic emissions, zero waste alternatives and the promotion of the region as a quality food producing and cultural area.
At the CHASE fundraising open day at the world famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shangarry, east Cork, Darina Allen spoke exclusively to BLUE about the campaign. Darina is famous for her culinary and hospitality work at Ballymaloe and has been involved in campaigns against genetic engineering and chemical plants in the past. Currently the east Cork region is a dynamic place, home not only to organic farms and high quality cultural amenities but also the heart of Ireland's chemical industry. CHASE fears that the incinerators would disturb that fragile equilibrium between industry and environment. Positive perceptions of the area would be damaged, if not destroyed. The East Cork Tourism initiative, launched recently, keenly promotes the perception of the region as a clean pleasant place to visit and identifies environmental enhancement as a key strategy for the future. But emissions from the proposed incinerators would impact negatively on the environment, entering the food chain and causing human health problems. As Darina says: "This is not only about our own health but the health of our children and grandchildren is at stake here."
East Cork
At Cobh harbour in Little Island, tourists enjoy the seaside and the historical connections with the Titanic (Cobh was its last port of call) as they gaze over the harbour to the stacks of the Pfizer factory, infamous as the home of Viagra. So strong has been the performance of the pharmaceutical sector in the Irish economy that some have named it the Viagra economy. Three miles away alongside the tourist flagship Fota Wildlife 'Prison' and exclusive golf course, the remains of the IFI fertilizer plant - closed last November by the Irish government - await decommissioning and reinvestment. The aging mostly male redundant workforce is unlikely to find gainful employment again and many suffer severe depression and consequent physical illnesses.
The debate about global capital sponsored industrialisation versus indigenous low impact quality activities has come to a head in the debate over the incinerators. The debate has long been aired in this region. Darina Allen supported the campaign to oppose the Merrell Dow chemical factory at nearby Killeagh in the late 1980s. When reminded of that by BLUE, Darina smiled saying, "I remember it well, it’s exactly the same issues involved now."
Since the Merrell Dow campaign, the region enjoyed its share of the 1990’s boom benefits. Nearby Youghal, once the major trading port on the south coast, welcomed corporates from the electronics sector to locate there. But few resources were committed to raising the education profile of the people and opportunities for laying the foundations for a sustainable local economy were missed.
Even now, despite the imminent enlargement of the EU, the coming Kyoto penalties and the high cost of labour in Ireland, many local people believe that replacement corporate employers will arrive with well paid factory jobs. Others echo the line from Mary Harney, deputy prime minister and leader of the Progressive Democrats party, about "moving up the value chain" as the key component in attracting mostly US foreign direct investment. Such positive soundings have yet to be reinforced by investment in community capacity building that would enable the workforce to perform the skilled tasks necessary as they rise up that value chain.
Now the electronics corporates are on their way out of the area, relocating to the cheap labour pools of Slovakia and China. Despite the success of Pfizer, the people of east Cork are coming to terms with huge job losses. Nearly 900 job losses for Youghal have been announced since June 2002. The town’s population is 7,000 and the latest social welfare figures indicate a steady upward rise to over 800 unemployed at the moment. That doesn’t include the large numbers of lone parents claiming social welfare in the town or the many people on disability benefit who avail of the town’s community care shelters. Nearby Midleton has over 1,200 signing on, the highest figure since the 1980s. The still prosperous farmers’ town now houses the expanding suburban sprawl sheltering Cork city commuters.
The Irish Waste Crisis
The Irish Government’s attempts to catch up with years of mismanagement of waste have led them to adopt a policy of regional incinerators throughout the country. Six domestic waste incinerators are proposed with Indaver the preferred company to deliver the programme.
An Bord Pleanala, the Irish statutory planning appeals board, agreed local authority planning permission for an incinerator for the north-east region at Kilcock on the Meath/Kildare border 40km from Dublin city despite its inspector recommending rejection, not because of the emissions from the incinerator, but because of traffic management issues within the small village. Kilcock is growing quickly around a tidy village by the Grand Canal as a commuter satellite town on the edge of Dublin’s US style urban sprawl. Housing estates facilitated by dubious planning practices enrich developers and landowners, creating comfortable consumer oases for the long distance city workers’ families.
Ireland clearly has a waste management crisis - illegal dumps have been "discovered" all over the country, some infamously containing waste traced to local authority offices. Many existing landfills are due to close soon as they fail to meet EU standards. Local authority waste collection charges have soared while efforts at recycling effectively stop at voluntary waste segregation with little actual recycling being carried out in the country.
Despite excellent pilot schemes in Portarlington and Galway, a policy of employing waste trainers to visit households and teach people directly about how to reduce, reuse and separate has not been implemented nationally. Instead the government has rested on the laurels of the 15 cent plastic bag tax, finally introduced after more than 15 years of pressure from green lobbies.
REPAK, the state quango abundantly resourced to promote recycling, collects vast levies from companies in lieu of compliance with EU packaging waste disposal legislation. They spend the money on salaries, conferences, tv ads and aloof public relations in timid wasteful dumbed down efforts to coax citizens into recycling. They choose not to go to the heart of the matter by investing in the actual physical infrastructure for recycling or the human capacity to do so.
Sunflower recycling, an inner city Dublin community recycling initiative, relies on Community Employment to resource its activities and may by in jeopardy due to the cutbacks that are dismantling Irish social and health initiatives. This is the context that persuades many, including the government, that incineration, despite its consequences, is the only answer.
Ballymaloe
"The first thing we should do is ban those wheelie bins," says Darina Allen. "Before that people dealt with their waste to a certain extent, nowadays people bung everything into a wheelie bin and it all goes into a landfill. It means that people opt out of all responsibility for dividing the waste in their own homes. I’m sure the people who are operating the wheelie bin systems would be willing to put out different coloured bins if it was needed. You don’t have to put them out of business, you just have to persuade them to operate their businesses in a different way."
At Ballymaloe Cookery School, the ethos is firmly one of taking personal responsibility for the waste produced. As Darina says: "Each and every one of us is part of the problem and we need to each of us take responsibility for out own waste that we produce. Here at the Cookery School for example, we live on the farm out in the middle of the country. The food scraps from the cookery school go out to the hens and come back as eggs a few days later. Some of the vegetable waste goes to the compost heap to go back onto the soil to enrich the land further. And then some of our scraps go into the stock-pot to make stock for soups. Paper is all shredded in the offices and goes as litter waste into the hen house. We give the drink cans to people who are raising money for the park in the village. We have a reed bed wetlands for our sewage and so on. We really encourage our students to use the minimum amount of detergent and all that sort of thing. I won’t have anti bacteriological detergent in the place. I won’t have biological soap powders and we don’t have any sterilizing agents in the place. I don’t agree with them because I think they kill off good bacteria as well as bad bacteria. In fact what’s happening is that stronger and stronger strains of bacteria emerge and in fact there are now lots and lots of strains of bacteria which are anti biotic resistant."
Ringaskiddy: Corporate incinerator or community action?
On 26 May Cork County Council will vote on the County Manager’s motion to grant planning permission for a 100,000 tonne hazardous waste incinerator at Ringaskiddy. No planning application for the municipal waste incinerator has yet been filed. CHASE is hoping the decision over the hazardous waste incinerator will be postponed for years until Indaver lose patience with the project. In the meantime, Ireland exports hazardous waste to Belgium and Holland for combustion in incinerators abroad. Campaigners' literature enthuses about a zero waste strategy but recognizes that recent developments in Ireland have not made it likely.
No matter which way the council vote, the matter seems certain to be appealed to An Bord Pleanala. A final decision is still at least months away, if not years. CHASE activists are gearing up to stand for election in the local authority elections that coincide with European Parliament elections next year. As dissatisfaction with the cutback government is rampant, they are confident of successes. Opposition politicians of all parties and some disgruntled government backbenchers are keen to be associated with supporting the campaign.
As a counter measure to the waste management crisis, the Government funded Cork Environmental Forum (CEF) have adopted the Global Action Plan (GAP) household management strategy as a grass roots waste minimization activity. GAP programmes are active in many countries. A successful programme in Ballymun in Dublin city inspired the CEF to promote the programme.
Two pilot schemes are up and running in Mahon (Cork city) and Mallow (north Cork post-industrial town). CHASE activists are keen to initiate similar community programmes in Youghal, Kinsale and Midleton. In Youghal the town council are keen to introduce a pay by weight waste collection system which they hope will inspire reductions in tonnage going to landfill. If these kind of small scale activities have any impact, they may lessesn the burden on landfill and the loads going to incinerators. They may even make the incinerators uneconomical.
But the years of illegal dumps, exported hazardous waste and poorly managed municipal landfills have taxed the patience of the decision makers who present the Indaver solution as the last saviour of bubble-wrapped consumer Ireland. Efforts to resist the incinerators have intensified amongst CHASE campaigners. They know that if the incinerators are commissioned, there will be no going back.
"Once these incinerators are on site it's impossible to get rid of them, or almost impossible, so it has to be prevented in the first place," says Allen. As campaigners gear up for the council vote, Ballymaloe remains a model of environmental excellence in an uncertain region. On a showery day, happy children scurry through the organic gardens, enchanted by the little chickens, the flowers, the shell-house and the plants. CHASE activists huddle around tables laden with tasty cakes monitoring the campaign that continues to advocate zero waste alternatives. In the pubs of east Cork, former factory workers watch the English soccer cup final on first communion day, searching for a dram of hope as global capital deserts the small towns of Ireland in search of cheaper labour elsewhere.
- – Eanna Dowling
Chronology of a Campaign:
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April 2001: Minchem, an Irish hazardous waste disposal
company part of the Belgian Indaver group, begin a series
of "information" meetings in the harbour area of county
Cork in the south of Ireland to inform communities that
they plan to apply for planning permission to build an
incinerator to handle 100,000 tonnes annually of hazardous
waste in Ringaskiddy. "We're willing to take this to the
courts, and we'll even go to Europe if we have to," says
Braham Brennan, of the Ringaskiddy Residents Association,
in response.
June 18, 2001: Indaver publicly announce that they will
seek planning permission.
August 2001: Ringaskiddy Residents' Association launch a
report outlining why they don't want a toxic incinerator in
their community. They say they have been "traumatised" by
industrialisation for three decades, and have had enough.
September 5, 2001: Cork anti-incinerator groups launch an
alliance to oppose Indaver and argue for alternative clean
technolgies, waste reuse, recycling and reduction.
September 15, 2001: Anti-incinerator groups met in Athlone
to discuss and agree on a joint policy against
incineration.
October 16, 2001: Sean Cronin of the Carrigaline for a Safe
Environment group is elected as their chair of the new
alliance, which decides to use the name Cork Harbour for a
Safe Environment (CHASE), and announce they will oppose
incineration and lobby for "an alternative Waste Management
Strategy based on reduction, reuse, recycling and
composting". CHASE now represents Ringaskiddy & District
Residents' Association Ltd; Carrigaline for a Safe
Environment; Crosshaven for a Safe Environment; Monkstown &
Passage for a Safe Environment; Mothers and Children
Against Incineration, Ringaskiddy; Cobh Action for Clean
Air; Kinsale Environmental Group; East Cork for a Safe
Environment; Middleton and East Cork Environmental
Association; Youghal Action for a Safe Environment and is
supported by the Irish Doctors Environmental Association
and the Irish Midwives Association,
November 7, 2001: CHASE launch a poster campaign opposing
incineration with an organized march through Carrigaline.
Dressed in gas masks and fallout suits, a group of children
and adults march to the council offices to present
questions to the county manager.
November 13, 2001: Indaver lodge planning application with
Cork County Council for a waste-to-energy hazardous waste
incinerator, announcing it will cost ir£60 million
(€75m/$75m), later revised to €89m, then €95. CHASE
respond, saying they will object vigorously to the
proposal, announcing a press conference to pose questions
to Indaver. They ask: "With a high uptake of recycling
(e.g. over 50%), Cork would be unable to sustain adequate
waste provision for an incinerator. Would Indaver then
propose to import waste to maintain the economic operation
of an incinerator?"
December 10, 2001: CHASE hold media conference to argue
that the proposed incinerator will poison the air, water
and soil of the Cork harbour environment. Sean Cronin said
CHASE was committed to opposing the Incinerator for as long
as it takes. "We will oppose the Incinerator to the highest
court possible, and if it goes ahead we will commit all our
resources to hunting down whoever is responsible for
allowing such a calamity, and exposing them. We do not want
to live in the Ruhr Valley."
December 19, 2001: Announcing that 2,500 objections to
Indaver's proposal have been lodged with Cork County
Council, CHASE say the objections reflect public opinion in
Cork city, county and beyond.
"Concerns over emissions from the incinerator contaminating
food supply by polluting the air, farmland, rivers and seas
in the immediate and wider area.
"Concerns over emissions will endangering the health of
residents in the immediate and wider area (dioxins from
incineration are known to cause cancer, birth defects,
foetal deaths, suppression of immune system, hormone
disruption, thyroid problems, central nervous disorders).
"Cork Harbour already has the highest level of dioxin
contamination in Ireland (Sandoz Baseline Study, 1991).
"The incinerator will require constant feeding with waste
to maintain a constant temperature. This situation will
have a discouraging effect on the need to develop a
vigorous 3Rs policy (reduce, reuse, recycle).
"The trucking of waste by lorries (up to 31,000 truck loads
per year) will create very serious additional environmental
problems by creating air and noise pollution, as well as
transport problems.
"The whole wider area will be affected economically by
falling house values and an attendant commercial and
economic depression."
January 3, 2002: Passage Town Council pass a motion to
lodge an official objection, following on from Cobh Urban
District Council as CHASE announce that 4,000 objections
have been lodged with Cork County Council from both private
individuals and their elected officials.
January 13, 2002: CHASE challenge environment minister
Martin Cullen over Ireland's obligations under the Kyoto
Protocol, claiming he is failing dismally to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. "The Ringaskiddy incinerators
alone, if built, will burn a minimum of 200,000 tonnes over
two phases, emitting 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per
annum. Because Ireland is already over its limits (by over
23%), this will result in a charge of Euro5m per annum, or
€100m over a 20 year lifespan of the incinerator. With
eight incinerators outlined across the country according to
Government plans, this would amount to a charge of €800m.
"The question of who is going to pay these costs must be
addressed. It is inexcusable to present the taxpayer with
bills like this in a few years time. The more serious
question however is why should costs arise at all -
incineration is highly risky and unnecessary. If Minister
Cullen was serious about complying with the Kyoto Protocol,
he would dump the government's pro-incineration policies,
and work towards implementing progressive 21st century
waste management solutions in Ireland."
January 30, 2002: Objections against Indaver's proposal
reach 8,000.
January 11, 2002: The Health and Safety Authority (HSA)
announce they will assess the health and safety of the
proposed incinerator.
February 2002: A group from the harbour area are invited by
Indaver to view and ask questions about its facilities in
Belgium. Carmel Cronin, in a report to the communities back
in Cork, writes: "We were told that 10 per cent of toxic
waste is IMPORTED. If this is the case in the heartland of
a heavily industrialised country, with a large
petrochemical and polymer chemical industry to name a few,
what guarantee is there that toxic waste will not be
imported into Ringaskiddy?"
April 2002: Fine Gael, an opposition parliamentary party,
do a u-turn on their waste policy and announce they want to
see a zero-waste policy adopted for Ireland, as CHASE lobby
hard in the run-up to the summer's national elections.
April 9, 2002: Pfizer, one of the largest chemical
corporates in Ireland, announce that they plan to apply for
planning permission to build an incinerator. Dan Boyle, of
the Green Party in Cork, argues that the proposal will
bring the number of incinerators operated by the chemical
industry in Cork up to six, making Indaver's proposal
uneconomical.
June 2002: With approval from the HSA for the proposed
incinerator, Cork County Council management say they will
seek a change in the county development plan to facilitate
the proposal. In their Agreed Programme for Government the
Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrats coalition government
state that high-temperature incineration is "not acceptable
policy" after ignoring the issue of incineration in its
election manifesto.
October 18, 2002: Indaver threaten CHASE with legal action
after the alliance's first media release revealed high
dioxin levels in chicken eggs close to one of the
corporate's incinerators in Belgium.
October 19, 2002: CHASE issue a clarification.
"Having had
communications with Indaver Ireland, we would agree that no
link has been proven between the emission breaches from the
Indaver Static Kiln Incinerator in Antwerp prior to Aug
14th, and the subsequent results of the F A V V (Belgian
Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain) analysis
of chicken eggs."
February 2003: Environment minister Martin Cullen
introduces a Protection of the Environment Bill, which is
designed to clear a fast-track for incineration. CHASE note
that more than 20,000 objections to Indaver's proposal have
been sent to the council.
March 24, 2003: Cork's planners say they have no objections
to Indaver's proposal, referring to a Health Research Board
report, which claims
"that modern incinerators, properly
operated and controlled, met environmental standards set
down by an EU directive". Indaver announce that they plan
to apply to the Environmental Protection Agency for an
Integrated Pollution Control licence for the incinerator.
April 2003: Maurice Moloney, the county manager, says a
vote on a material contravention of the county development
plan will be taken on May 26.
May 19, 2003: CHASE react with shock to the information in
Indaver's IPC licence that it proposes to burn 400 tonnes a
year of asbestos. Section 3.6 of the licence states that
Indaver also propose to burn medical and infectious
healthcare waste, sludges and slurries, meat and bonemeal,
pharmachem industry waste, waste oils, commercial wastes,
tyres and other 'unspecified' wastes.
May 2003: Cork Harbour Area for a Safe Environment (CHASE)
change name to Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (CHASE).
CHASE: http://www.chaseireland.org/
INDAVER: http://www.minchem.ie/about_irl.asp
EPA: http://www.epa.ie/
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