1 March 2001 Edition
Arthur Morgan visits Indaver in Belgium
Louth County Councillor Arthur Morgan recently travelled to Belgium as part of a delegation organised by LMFM radio station to investigate Indaver, the company that has applied for planning permission to build an incinerator at Carranstown, beside Platin CRH works on the County Meath side of the Louth border. Already thousands of people have signed their outrage at the very idea and are currently making objections to Indaver's plans. The Sinn Féin councillor told An Phoblacht's ROISIN DE ROSA what he discovered.
``There is one huge stack belching smoke across what is a heavily industrialised area outside Antwerp, with no houses around. I saw another two smaller stacks. All three created a thick pall of smoke across the whole area. The first large stack turned out to be a nuclear power station. One of the two smaller ones was Indaver's incinerator. The place reminded me of Sellafield.
Beside the incinerator is a huge pile of ash, 200 yards square and about 40 foot high. This, we were told was not toxic, but it turned out to be the bottom ash, which is well know to contain many carcinogenic pollutants, including dioxins and highly poisonous heavy metals. Indaver argued to us that this pile was ``harmless'' and would be going to their ``ash treatment plant''.
Indaver, in its numerous glossy brochures, advertises itself as a company heavily committed to recycling. We were taken to see their composting facility. It was nothing but tokenism, consisting of a large shed, which in the whole year composts only 50,000 tons of organic waste.
We also visited their waste separation facility, where they employ 15 people to hand sort the waste, separating cans, plastic containers etc. The workers, they told us, were people of ``no education'', who could ``not get alternative employment''. Their pay rate matched their qualifications.
``A further disturbing thing which we learnt when visiting Indaver was that when plastic material is taken out of the waste stream into the incinerator, they find it very difficult to burn the waste. Consequently, oil or gas has to be used to carry out the incineration process. Can anything be more ridiculous than wasting expensive imported fossil fuel to power an incinerator?
Minister Dempsey wants to ``sell'' us incineration as a form of energy recovery. Does Platin CRH, next door to Carranstown, have its eye on subsidised energy from Indaver? Why else would anyone have thought of Carranstown as a nice location for an incinerator?
My conclusions from this trip, are clear. I have only seen similar pollution of the environment like this in Sellafield. Did councillors agree to make Carranstown the dirty valley for the North East? Is Indaver's policy to get as many polluting industries in the one place, so then no one will be able to identify the polluters? The pile of ash, the treatment of the workers in their separation unit, all indicate Indaver to be a company which is more than careless with pollution, and human beings.''
``There is one huge stack belching smoke across what is a heavily industrialised area outside Antwerp, with no houses around. I saw another two smaller stacks. All three created a thick pall of smoke across the whole area. The first large stack turned out to be a nuclear power station. One of the two smaller ones was Indaver's incinerator. The place reminded me of Sellafield.
Beside the incinerator is a huge pile of ash, 200 yards square and about 40 foot high. This, we were told was not toxic, but it turned out to be the bottom ash, which is well know to contain many carcinogenic pollutants, including dioxins and highly poisonous heavy metals. Indaver argued to us that this pile was ``harmless'' and would be going to their ``ash treatment plant''.
Indaver, in its numerous glossy brochures, advertises itself as a company heavily committed to recycling. We were taken to see their composting facility. It was nothing but tokenism, consisting of a large shed, which in the whole year composts only 50,000 tons of organic waste.
We also visited their waste separation facility, where they employ 15 people to hand sort the waste, separating cans, plastic containers etc. The workers, they told us, were people of ``no education'', who could ``not get alternative employment''. Their pay rate matched their qualifications.
``A further disturbing thing which we learnt when visiting Indaver was that when plastic material is taken out of the waste stream into the incinerator, they find it very difficult to burn the waste. Consequently, oil or gas has to be used to carry out the incineration process. Can anything be more ridiculous than wasting expensive imported fossil fuel to power an incinerator?
Minister Dempsey wants to ``sell'' us incineration as a form of energy recovery. Does Platin CRH, next door to Carranstown, have its eye on subsidised energy from Indaver? Why else would anyone have thought of Carranstown as a nice location for an incinerator?
My conclusions from this trip, are clear. I have only seen similar pollution of the environment like this in Sellafield. Did councillors agree to make Carranstown the dirty valley for the North East? Is Indaver's policy to get as many polluting industries in the one place, so then no one will be able to identify the polluters? The pile of ash, the treatment of the workers in their separation unit, all indicate Indaver to be a company which is more than careless with pollution, and human beings.''