Fuel to the fire

As work starts on one of Europe’s biggest incinerators, it’s become a hot political topic as well as an eco one

John Burns

These days Dublin’s waste is a valuable commodity. It’s even fought over. Rights to the apple butts, dirty nappies and pizza crusts dumped in the capital’s bins have been disputed in the High Court. The city council is accused of being “greedy” and of “grabbing as much waste as it can”.
It may be leftover food or used plastic to you, but waste in Dublin has an extra dimension. It is potential fuel for the incinerator that the city council is building on the Poolbeg peninsula. The waste-to-energy plant, as the council prefers to call it, will have the capacity to burn 600,000 tonnes a year. Given that the Republic of Ireland produces about 3m tonnes of waste, of which more than a third is recycled, you can see why the city council would want to get its hands on as much rubbish as possible.
In that regard, it suffered a setback in the High Court before Christmas. Panda, a private recycling firm, challenged the council’s bid to change the waste-collection system so that only it, or a contractor it appointed, could pick up household rubbish. The council’s idea was to take control of all Dublin’s waste and burn it at Poolbeg. Justice Liam McKechnie ruled that this was in breach of competition law.
Typically, opponents of the incinerator responded with glee. “If [the city council] decides to disregard the implications of this judgment and proceed with the incinerator as planned, it will only dig itself into deeper trouble,” crowed John Gormley, the environment minister.
Brendan Keane, of the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA), which represents private operators, said the council’s “attempt to grab control of waste” was “nothing more than a desperate effort to ensure that it has enough fuel to feed the Poolbeg incinerator”.
In this debate, size matters. While Poolbeg residents are worried about health and the number of trucks that will trundle out to the peninsula laden down with waste, these issues are now peripheral because the incinerator has both planning permission and a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Gormley says the incinerator is “too big”; the IWMA that it’s “grossly oversized”. The city council says it’s just right. According to a spokeswoman: “600,000 tonnes a year is the amount of waste that needs to be diverted from landfill when we reach maximum recycling. The EPA says it’s sized correctly and An Bord Pleanála thinks so too.”
The argument will intensify this year, and no detail is too trivial to ignore. For example, the IWMA has complained that a water fowl survey should be carried out at the site for “a period of at least one year, ie 12 consecutive months”. The council has done two separate six-month surveys, the IWMA grieves, but “it hasn’t actually done it for 12 consecutive months”. So it seems that Dublin city council will be fought on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the rivers and the streams.
AN important fact about the Poolbeg incinerator is that it is in John Gormley’s constituency, Dublin South East. If he could, Gormley would stop it. But as environment minister he does not have that legal power. Knowing that they can gain an electoral advantage, Gormley’s political rivals, councillors and TDs, do not “accept” that the minister cannot halt the incinerator. Ever since his appointment in 2007, they have goaded him over this issue. Gormley would scarcely be human if he didn’t react.
“People think this is just a local issue, because it’s in his back garden, and that is why he’s objecting to the incinerator,” said a spokesman for Gormley. “That is not the case. The reason that he is so vehemently opposed is because of national waste policy. The incinerator is too big. Why are we building what will be one of the biggest incinerators in Europe to service a medium-sized city?
“It runs the danger of doing two things. First, it could fossilise the waste streams, acting as a barrier against innovation and new forms of waste treatment. This has been a feature in countries that have a high incineration capacity, including in Scandinavia. Secondly, the minister is concerned that there could be significant competition issues. You’ll have one facility with the capacity to deal with one-fifth of all waste in the country.”
Unable to kill off the incinerator with a clean blow, Gormley is toying with ways to cut off its oxygen. He might, for example, put a cap on the amount of waste that can be incinerated in Ireland. Or he could re-write national waste policy, which since 1996 has had incineration at its centre.
Instead, he has chosen another tactic. The city council has guaranteed to provide Covanta, the American developer of the incinerator, with 320,000 tonnes of waste each year. According to the contract it has signed, it must pay a penalty of €100 per tonne less than that amount.
The council insists this will never be a problem. “There will be no penalty as long as Covanta gets waste from somewhere,” it says. But Gormley is concerned that “a liability for the ratepayer and taxpayer may ultimately arise”. As it’s a 25-year contract, “any liability is potentially substantial”.
The minister once mused aloud that the city council might only be able to deliver half of the promised 320,000 tonnes. “If that is the case, we are looking at a liability [of] about €18m a year for about 20 years,” Gormley said. That back-of-the-envelope calculation was immediately seized on by opponents of the incinerator and the figure bandied about as if it were inevitable.
Last month, Gormley said he would appoint an inspector to “conduct a full review of the financial implications of the project for the state”. The inspector will be appointed after a “selective tendering process” — in other words, three or four people will be asked to bid for the work. Given the context, such a restrictive way of choosing an inspector may undermine his findings.
IWMA’s real concern about why the Poolbeg incinerator should not be built is commercial. Its members include Indaver, which is building a rival incinerator in Meath. Other companies have invested heavily in a form of waste disposal that may be made redundant by a giant furnace in east Dublin.
“They are concerned that the Poolbeg operator could offer incineration for next to nothing, driving them out of business and causing job losses,” said a spokesman for the waste companies. “We are not opposed to incineration — there is residual waste that has to be dealt with, because you can’t recycle everything. We are simply saying that the incinerator is twice as big as it should be.”
The city council not only argues that the incinerator is “appropriately sized”, it also rubbishes a favourite argument of opponents — that it will have to source waste from as far afield as Cork and Donegal to feed the monster in Poolbeg. There will be no need to go outside Dublin, it says.
John Tierney, the city manager, is hurt at Gormley’s criticisms. He points out that local authorities in Dublin have been following government policy, as set down in 1996 when Gormley wasn’t even a TD. The council has checked every move with the government first.
“The minister said on December 21 that we should not have entered into the contract in the first place,” Tierney said. “He must be aware that we are under a statutory obligation to implement the objectives of the Waste Management Plan. At all stages our actions were approved by the Department of the Environment and were in accordance with Department of Finance guidelines for public-private partnerships.
“The government was advised by me of the signing of the contract in 2007, and that this was a result of government policy. And I have consistently advised of the potential implications of interfering with the contract, including the compensation that could arise from terminating it.
“I have no indication of a willingness by government to take on the liability for altering the contract, or a change in policy direction that has the same effect.”
Essentially, Tierney is challenging Gormley: if you want us to cancel the incinerator deal with Covanta, give us the millions of euro compensation that we’d have to pay; and if you really want to stop the incinerator, change government policy on waste.
That would mean, of course, that Gormley would have to convince his Fianna Fail cabinet colleagues. The idea of either the government or Dublin city council paying millions in compensation to an American company is unlikely to win favour in the Department of Finance, to say the least.
Privately, some Gormley supporters say the council is “scaremongering” about the amount of compensation that would have to be paid to Covanta. “There are various clauses in the contract that allow the parties to walk away,” one said. “There could be some costs, but it’s a case of who blinks first, who withdraws. The council could do it in a way that would attract a high penalty, but there are other ways.”
The contractors moved on-site in mid-December, but so far there has been little work done at Poolbeg. That is set to change this spring. Gormley’s inspector should report back before the summer, but as with so many political disputes in Ireland, the courts may eventually sort it out.
The city council will not decide whether to appeal against the McKechnie ruling until at least February, when the final judgment is published. “The upshot [of McKechnie’s ruling] is a free-for-all in the waste market,” Tierney said. “This is unlike the position in most European countries. It is recommended [internationally] that there be competition for the market rather than in the market, and we presume the minister [Gormley] agrees with this.”
While the city council contemplates going to the Supreme Court, emboldened by its legal victory, private waste companies could launch a direct court challenge against the incinerator itself. Meanwhile, government sources expect that anything Gormley does to stop the incinerator will be challenged by Covanta or the city council by way of judicial review.
“Either way, I think it will end up in the courts,” one source said. Waste, the most disputed commodity in Dublin, is going to be fought over a while longer before it gets burnt.