September 18, 2009

Poolbeg Incinerator -Finances, Alternatives

From Comment No. 9 posted by 'Carol' - September 15, 2009 to The Cedar Lounge Revolution

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/the-luckiest-man-in-the-green-party/

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Firstly the issues about the cost of this project must be raised again and again. You are correct that Dublin CC have been landed with a huge bill to manage the project so far, however from my reading of the information to date it is now well over €30 million and not the (€19 million) figure quoted here. The omissions include the various additional costs within Dublin CC and Bord An Pleanala as well as Government and the various other Consultants employed by the Ministry – and it wont stop there!

The second part of the costs issue relates to the fact that the advised Tender Cost by Dong is farcical and wholly inaccurate and in the light of forthcoming and approved Environmental Legislation to be enacted before 2019 will be exceeded by a huge amount. These include the adoption of stringent particulate emission control as well as preventing the emission of the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS) which is covered under Irish and European Union Legislation following UN edicts included in the Stockholm Convention. In addition though, even more interesting, is the fact that by 2019 all incineration plants will be required to install equipment to capture all the carbon dioxide they emit.


These issues are already defined and known about and without a doubt the additional costs of around €180 million will have to be borne by the Irish Tax Payers as they would be considered ”additional” to the base and the premise by which the existing offer in response to the call for tenders was invited. It is worthy to note that under EU Procurement Directives this change to a proposal is declared to be significant enough and of such a high value as to declare the existing offer for incineration to be invalid. Accordingly the Minister has a right on behalf of the Government to declare [the existing & secret contract] should be thrown out.

My comment in response is that if you follow the links in the ”Google web” search engine there is a ready answer here based upon full recycling of the raw waste and the subsequent treatment of the residual waste which is called here ”biodegradable municipal waste (BMW)” to make the biofuel ethanol for transport uses. In these items a statement about the best way forward as an alternative was raised in discussions about 2 or 3 years ago with the Government in Dublin which stated that:
(i) by fully recycling materials from the waste and recovering them and the inert materials – removing them from the waste,
(ii) there were no environmental down sides compared to incineration (no toxic emissions) because the process was totally enclosed and wet,
(iii) that all the residues were all able to be reused.


I understand that in discussions about this proposition a budget was given at less than €100 million for the equivalent project for Dublin’s Ringsend project and that it did not need a gate fee (treatment fee) any higher than €30-00 per tonne.


I understand and hear that a number of projects using the same system have been given approval to start in Holland, Yorkshire (UK), Kentucky, Hawaii, and Viet Nam with others to be announced by November 2009.


So as these projects are now going ahead – even in England – and they are all firmly costed in line with this proposal which was stated for Dublin and to the Ministers then there cannot be any doubt that the Government here must change its direction here, And the Minister John Gormley TD and his compatriot Eamon Ryan TD must act now and quickly to stop this nonsense in Ringsend.

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