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Ringaskiddy Incinerator Oral Hearing Report
 cork |
environment |
news report
 Tuesday May 12, 2009 00:07 by John
An Bord Pleanala Oral Hearing on Indaver’s proposed incinerators at Ringaskiddy. The International Airport Hotel, Cork 27th April - ?
This is the latest stage in the 8 yr saga of multinational waste management company Indaver and their efforts to construct two incinerators (a municipal and industrial one, now called Waste to Energy Facilities) at Ringaskiddy, Cork Harbour and the work of local group CHASE (Cork Harbour for a Safe Environment) to stop them. It is possibly the third oral hearing in this long drawn out, gruelling and horrendously complicated process.
The reason it has been so long and drawn out is due largely to the efforts of a relatively small group of people. This group (CHASE) have engaged in the work of halting this project, on health, environmental and social grounds by raising and spending nearly e200000, and no-one knows how many thousands of hours of work. They have contested the project by means of planning objections, judicial reviews and oral hearings and for those of us living in the Cork Harbour area they deserve our utmost gratitude and support for keeping this monster at bay since 2001 and keeping our air and our water that bit cleaner and raising humanity’s consciousness that little bit by not letting this go by unchallenged.
Indaver themselves gave them credit when they revealed during the hearing that the reason they had applied for a ten year licence this time as opposed to a 5 yr one the last time was because they had spent that 5 years dealing with local opposition to the project and their licence had run out (my heart bleeds for you Indaver). Of course this time they have applied under the Strategic Infrastructure Bill that was brought in to speed up unpopular but oh so necessary projects like high pressure pipelines and toll roads and incinerators they also have a multi million euro turnover so it’s not like there’s any sort of unfair advantage here.
I couldn’t help but notice the way that the face of John Ahern (managing director of Indaver) kept changing shade up and down the scale from dark red to light and back again. Perhaps this reveals that he is feeling some of the pressure he has helped put Ringaskiddy and Cork Harbour residents under in recent years.
Anyway, I was in the hearing for only about an hour, ( it has been going on nearly 2 weeks since 27th April). There was a lot of important but hard to digest information coming out. It’s hard to get much of a picture in such a short time but here are my impressions. A point that will be surprising to some and strangely heartening to others is that Cork County Council are opposed to the project. Indaver seemed to be trying to make the point that there is a need for this project because Cork’s landfill capacity is too small while the council representatives and Chase were raising issues around waste minimization through education, appropriate technologies and changed habits. One of the council guys used phrase something like. “Decoupling waste increase from economic expansion”. They seem to have done a lot of work in this respect.
The basic thrust of the discussion was that incineration runs counter to Cork County Council policy and that if approved it will put the spanner in the work that is being done around waste minimization because once fired up it requires constant feeding.
In Cork the pharmaceutical, In Erris the oil and gas
This is practically the last stage in resistance to this project through official channels. If An Bord Pleanala give it the go ahead despite all this work (as they did before) it will require more people to pick up the baton if we really want to stop it. The Oral Hearing doesn’t have much longer to run. CHASE would very much appreciate people to drop in to the Hearing to offer support and learn about the issues.
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Comments (28 of 28)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28It would be interesting for someone with a lot of time on their hands to do a study comparing this campaign to opposition to the Corrib gas project. A few points jump to my mind:
Cork harbour is already industrialized while Broadhaven Bay is unspoilt
Cork Co Council have come out against Indaver whilst Mayo Co Co have colluded with Shell
Resistance to the Cork incinerator has been predominantly local with little national support or interest. Corrib has captured the imagination of people nationally and internationally who have come to get involved in the campaign though it has remained locally led and focused
Chase have almost entirely used “official channels” with minimal direct action (frustrating to some)while the Erris campaign has emphasized the direct action and civil disobedience approach.
It struck me how polite everyone was being at the recent Oral Hearing, yet the frustration and anger of CHASE people and Ringaskiddy inhabitants was still palpable. It was an interesting contrast to being in a ruck with cops and security at Glengad or Bellinaboy. Yet underneath it the dynamics felt very similar, a community having to protect itself against encroachment from industry. Again the dynamic is shamefully uneven.
Pressure on campaigners in Cork has been through the time and money they have had to expend and the considerable stress taken on through this. Erris people have been physically assaulted and intimidated in addition to the everyday work of running a campaign.
This is not to belittle the situation of the Cork Harbour folk. In fact the pressure on them from industrialization has been going on for over 30 years and the physical violence has mainly been in the form of toxic substances in the air and the food chain as well as the stress of having the pharmaceutical industry as a neighbour. Perhaps the people of Erris have taken note of this and it has informed and spurred on their struggle.
Thanks for that John. I just wonder which tactic will be the more successful - CHASE with their softly softly "legal" route or the people of Erris who have been forced to turn to civil disobedience due to the violence and intimidation visited upon them by Shell and its henchmen be it the hired mercenaries or the gardaí.
The semi urban nature of Ringaskiddy would make it much easier in some ways to mount major protests (being just 12 miles from a major city and with a large local population from Carrigaline around to Cobh) but the people of Erris have their backs to the wall at this stage and it is either fight or die - perhaps not physicially die, but their livelihoods are in grave threat.
Personally I suspect that the incinerator in Ringaskiddy will go ahead despite the legal charade of another oral hearing. Corrib is a different matter - it is being delayed and can be stopped if enough people care and get involved. It really needs a massive mobilisation however (thousands, not hundreds) to achieve this.
On another point - the media here seem to have deliberatly played down news of a major explosion in a gas pipeline in Central Moscow, Russia over the weekend. Five people were injured, one of them with 35% burns when a low pressure gas pipeline ruptured and caught fire in the city. This is the damage done when a low pressure pipeline bursts -the one in Mayo will be a considerably higher pressure (and more dangerous) one.
I think that the two campaigns are linked, whether the protagonists realise it or not and both have lessons to teach the other.
I think there is also a strategic benefit in looking at them both as aspects of the same struggle.
The CHASE campaign also has a resources aspect to it. By handing over "waste" management to Indaver (Invader) we are handing over a large chunk of our resources in the form of materials that given a bit of imagination we could put back to use
The situation in Cork harbour now is the kind of thing we may see in Erris if Shell's project goes ahead. Back in the late 60s and 70s when the pharmchem industry started coming in there was less awareness of the issues and people were relieved at the chance of jobs so with a few notable exceptions resistance was minimal. We now know where this leads.
The people of Ringaskiddy know what it is to be beaten by gardai also. I refer to the Raybestos Manhattan campaign of the 70s. What we see now with the CHASE campaign is merely the latest manifestation of a struggle that goes back at least as far as this.
We, or the inhabitants of the harbour area are now faced with the apparently intractable problem of what to do with the mess that the industry has left behind. I refer to Irish Steel's slag heap at Haulbowline and who knows what else, as well as the long term health impacts on people living in the area, not to mention the social impacts of living under what it could be argued is a form of occupation.
Perhaps the reason Ireland is seen as such an easy mark for multinationals is because it has not yet healed from the damage done by 800 years of a less subtle form of occupation. The greatest challenge of living under oppression is maintaining the strength of will not to begin accepting that oppression and seeing it as normal.
Anyway, we cannot simply write off the CHASE campaign, whether we agree with their tactics or not. It is as important as Erris because if it is successful it sets the stage for developing strategies for bringing industry to heel and getting the mess cleared up in areas where it has already become entrenched.
What will happen after this oral hearing I do not know. We may see different actors coming to the fore and things may move into a civil disobedience phase. The campaign may be defeated and die a death or something else entirely unexpected may happen.
Either way my purpose in writing this is to give a heads up to people living in the harbour area and beyond and to give credit to the work done so far by CHASE and others.
CHASE post regular press releases conveying their views on how the Oral hearing is progressing on their website - www.chaseireland.org
Over the last two weeks or so, topics such as site selection, emergency procedures, national hazardous wast management policy and health have been aired
of the 295 submissions received by An Bord Pleanala, none were in favour
just a comment on the direct action versus legal action tactics alluded to above.
Some 30 years ago at Barnahely, Ringaskiddy, Gardai forced their way through a human barrier trying to prevent asbestos being dumped at a site granted planning permission by Cork County Council. Women and children were hospitalised, May 15 1979. Raybestos Manahattan, the company dumping the waste, eventually pulled out of Cork, due to a concerted local direct action and legal campaign opposing them.
Since the 1960s, the communities around Cork harbour have been subjected to ongoing toxic pollution. Yet the sources of pollution often provide the source of employment to local families. One could make the case that the local community's capacity for direct action is exhausted, others say that in a (hypothetical) post oral hearing, permission and construction scenario, direct action may occur to prevent the facility being built.
Also, for those inclined to protest, Ringaskiddy represents a more complicated situation, with no Premier League multinational baddie to rail against. The collusion of State and industry to co-create the poison harbout at Cork has defined the economic and social live of the region, with a beleagured community using whatever means they have at their disposal to fight unwelcome developments.
Robert Allen's book "No Global, the People of Ireland versus the Multinationals" sheds light on the history, the issues and the direct action and other tactics employed by the community around Cork Harbour, and other places. Read it.
Thanks for clarification and background info Eanna
Another situation currently ongoing in the harbour area is the proposed construction of an underwater high voltage cable across the East Channel of the harbour. This is the same one that Cobh residents fought so hard to get put undersea some years back.
Unfortunately the fishermen who still use Cork Harbour (there are still a few left) were not consulted about this and are objecting to the development on environmental grounds. I don't have much more on this at present but will try and get more info.
Perhaps there is a need for a cross harbour forum where diverse groups can get together and work out a long term strategy for the sustainable stewardship of the area.
at the end of the day, building an incinerator will create a good few jobs during construction, and then require a much smaller number of jobs to keep it running, while it pollutes the place.
Whereas, a move to a greener economy, waste minimisation, separation etc, would surely create more sustainable jobs and more of them.
Hopefully that argument will prevail with the Co. Council.
It's An Bord Pleanala who have to be convinced in this case Hamish cos they are the one's doing the oral hearing. Not to mention industry figures who seem able to exert a lot of pressure on ABP given the result of the last hearing where the Board overruled the conclusion of a senior planner who found conclusively against the project.
Greed and Need is a play , all about the greed of a private developer who attemps to come into Cork Harbour with a plan for a gigantic building and an 85 meter stack, so visible it would become iconic and would perpetuate his standing forever, a monument with a dominant position.
The site to build it on is so irresistible that the private developer believes, that with a little outside help he could get around all difficulties, - an eroding boundary, which the sea is claiming, a flooding road and site, which the sea with the help of climate change is making difficult planning, or so he thinks.
The plot is, to get planning permission to poison the people within a 10 mile radius and even depending on the wind even further. The script is very exciting, as he must keep the people in the dark in case they discover that Best Available Technology - BAT is available to take over and scupper his chances to make him the owner of a tolling monopoly incinerator, for all the toxic waste of all Ireland, North and South.He has a great problem - the resulting ash from a 240,000 ton incinerator must go somewhere - he has not decided that yet, not quite as he comes up again with rules and regulations.
He must act quickly but he needs fast tracking, and he needs to get Hazardous facilities included in any fast tracking.
The outside help comes , early in Act 1, Wink and Nod enter, and enable his own Project Manager be appointed to the licencing board before they get their licence. The actor used in this act is the same actor who played the part in "E-voting" - that play ran for years.
In act two, the help of another Minister is introduced, he Strategic Infrastructural Act "fast tracking"becomes law very quickly in case greedy private developers, might feel discouraged and walk away because of quidelines or rules involved in handling Hazardous waste.
The script may sound a bit jaded at this point but it works well, maybe not now, but in the past .
I won't give away the ending except to say it includes the audience with effects like toxic emission, thermal inversions, traffic congestion etc. Read the reviews.
All these problems with multinational industries could be avoided if the government ratified this United Nations agreement. We are signed up to it but we are the only one of 83 countries that have not ratified it.
I have information that the civil servants that studied the agreement were in favor of ratifiying but the Fianna Fail crooks were against it.
Fianna Fail have apointed their cronies to most of the state boards and have almost total control over this country.
As regard Rosport the greena Fail minister Eamon Ryan said on morning Ireland that the gas will be brought in regardless and that mayo will be the major center for oil and gas creating lots of jobs. Patricia mckenna was correct here is a clasic example of a hypocrite. The Greens condemned Fianna Fail on many occasions for their coruption but have now joined them in crime.
The opositon is strangely silent on this and many other important issues.
John and Hamish,
All the very progressive work done by the County Council in their waste management plans has very little effect, as under the SIA the fast tracking means it goes straight to An Bord Pleanala, it will be up to them to take this into account or not.
It has very little connection with the last planning, as this is completely new under the Strategic Infrastructural Act. This time health and the environment will be assessed. It is for an increased capacity and scale, on a deminishing site because of road requirements of their site for the N28, and the effect of erosion of their boundary because of existing claims of tides and storms, and now climate change.
Those of us in Chase represent - Cobh, Carrigaline, Monkstown, Passage, Glenbrook, Rushbrook, Whitepoint, Ringaskiddy, East Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, and Cork City. We represent the 30,000 objectors who eights years ago signaled we don't want it.
A privater developer on the back of the Celtic Tiger is driving this - his need, his greed.
CHASE has done a fantastic job so far. Maybe a strategy rethink in light of changing circumstances in near future?
I heard a loud bang while sitting in my conservatory this morning.I was later to hear that there was some explosion this am at the Hammond Lane scrap yard.Does anyone know what happened.?f It was an extemely loud bang. If it was as the result of some process at the site we should be told what happened. We have just had the first part of the Oral Hearing where risks associated with incineration, fire and explosion were discussed.It is not safe to have a scrap yard located in the middle of such a dangerous site.Indaver are looking for planning permission for two incinerators and a waste tranfer station.What would have happened this morning if there were built??It is not good enough to expose us to these risks.
Indaver really are stuck between a rock and a hard place here. On the one hand, they've got coastal erosion on one side, and on the other side, they've got as we saw again yesterday - a combustion station, and the boundary of their site. So they can't move their incinerator to engineer their way out of these problems that they say are manageable.
The county architect stated at the Oral Hearing that the site was too small for the structure, and said they were trying to make the shoe fit after the purchase - like a cinderella site!
There isn't any question that the site in question is unsuitable, the proposed location a disaster. The real question is if in the current political climate, the mehtods being used by CHASE will be successful.....
First Cinderella, then Homer Simpson, gee all the famous cartoon characters are up for shouts it's such a bad choice of site. Any good satirists would have such great material with the site choice.