February 3, 2010

ESRI Now In Taxpayer Blackmail Game for Poolbeg Incinerator?

 Paul Gorecki, lead author of the ESRI report, warned yesterday that compensation would have to be paid if the Poolbeg project did not proceed.
 - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0203/breaking13.htm


Build it or else?  Is ESRI now in the game with the City Manager of making financial threats to Ireland's taxpayers?   DCC's PR company seems to have launched this game of massaging public opinion by threat in January 2010.

It's reported that ESRI has been paid for the report by Dublin City Council.  This paid-for report seems to follow the line of DCC, as directed by Mr Bertie (Nation's Bankrupt-er) and Mr Biffo (NAMA Billions). 

DCC has been judged (unapproved judgement) to have "massaged" information and to have used "undue influence" in a public process concerning the Poolbeg Incinerator.   
 
Recently the Dublin City Council's manager has been claiming taxpayers will be hit with large charges (€300 million?) if the Poolbeg Incinerator is not built.

DCC has a secret contract with Covanta -
  • a similar contract near Orlando has cost Lake County's residents $300 million and 
  • 20 years of lawsuits, and has 
  • stopped promotion of recycling.  
  • Waste now has to be imported to keep the Orlando incinerator financially viable.  
  • Covanta has just disclosed it will import waste from across Ireland to keep Poolbeg viable, probably by ship.  Another cynically massaged fact hidden from the public process by the Archbishop Of Waste, Poolbeg Parish?

It is quite possible that the City Manager is working closely with the Environment Minister to create more shallow excuses for doing nothing.  Forty Shades of Greed.


__________
[Because of Covanta Contract] "...we're also not promoting recycling in a big way right now."
 - Waste Boss Daryl Smith, Lake County, Florida.  Dec 2009.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 16:13
Expert rejects ESRI's 'flawed' report

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or availability of other websites

LUKE CASSIDY

The author of a review into waste management practice has accused the Economic and Social Research Institute’s (ESRI) report published today of featuring a number of “factual errors” and “misplaced assumptions”.

“If ESRI were to correct the errors they have made, they would reach similar conclusions to those of our international expert team,” said Dr Dominic Hogg of consultants Eunomia.

The ESRI’s report - An Economic Approach to Municipal Waste Management Policy in Ireland - was critical of the Minister for Environment’s policy on waste incineration saying it had “no underlying rationale” and is likely to impose “needless costs on the economy”.

It also said the report by Eunomia, carried out separately for the Minister, was “severely flawed” in setting its recommended levies for residual waste.

However, Dr Hogg said while it is understandable the ESRI has “very limited experience” in the area of waste management policy and information “factual errors and misplaced assumptions around economics and policy which appear throughout the report” cannot pass without comment.

He said the ESRI assumes wrongly that emissions of carbon dioxide from waste facilities can be ignored because they are already “paid for” through the existence of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Dr Hogg claimed the ESRI report calculates the environmental costs of air pollution but then ignores them. It does this because, he said, the facilities are regulated under permits and licenses issued by the EPA. As a result, the externalities resulting from the remaining emissions that do occur are zero.

“This line of argument might be expected from an industrial lobby group, but not from ESRI, and no independent environmental economist would subscribe to their view,” Dr Hogg said.

He also said carbon dioxide emissions reported in the study for incineration are too low by a factor of 10 and that the source of data for emissions from MBT is not referring to an MBT facility at all.

He said he would write to the director of the ESRI to request changes be made.

“We suspect that it will then become clear that the differences in the ESRI and Eunomia figures for the proposed levy on incineration would be slight,” Dr Hogg added.

Anonymous said...

Council paid €125,000 for ESRI report

OLIVIA KELLY
February 3, 2010, 19:54

Dublin City Council paid almost €125,000 for the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report which criticises Minister for the Environment John Gormley's policies on incineration, it has emerged.

Anonymous said...

More "Errors" from another DCC "Expert"

A leading member of the ESRI, Prof Richard Toll, has accepted in a Sunday newspaper that their controversial report did contain errors and would have to be corrected.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0207/waste.html

Dr Higg said the €22m paid to consultants on the planned Poolbeg Incinerator would have been enough to build a plant capable of dealing with 100,000 tonnes of waste through mechanial biological treatment.

Anonymous said...

http://election.ie/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sbp_feb7_bottom.jpg