The Garbage County

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday February 27, 2002 20:05 by Graham Caswell caswell at indigo dot ie (0402) 31314

The Waste Crisis in Wicklow [Opinion]

The revelations never seem to stop. A private dump near Enniskerry operated for years outside of its planning permission and is now found to be polluting the ground water. The county council itself may have been using an illegal dump in a quarry near Blessington. Hospital waste is found illegally dumped in several locations in west Wicklow and there may be as many as two hundred illegal dumps in the county.

The revelations never seem to stop. A private dump near Enniskerry operated for years outside of its planning permission and is now found to be polluting the ground water. The county council itself may have been using an illegal dump in a quarry near Blessington. Hospital waste is found illegally dumped in several locations in west Wicklow and there may be as many as two hundred illegal dumps in the county.

The main county dump at Ballymurtagh, Avoca is full years before it is supposed to be - and, being an unlined dump in the rock fractured by the Avoca mines and being located beside the Avoca river, may be a source of serious pollution for generations to come. Everywhere around Wicklow the illegal dumping of black plastic bags of rubbish can be seen - dumped by people unwilling to pay for the disposal of their waste and too ignorant or uncaring to be concerned about the damage their actions cause.

At the same time, and while Wicklow County Council has made commendable improvements in recent years, Wicklow still has no doorstep recycling of any kind and education and public awareness efforts are still not as widespread as they could and should be. And above all no real effort has been made to minimise waste production - as a brief visit to any supermarket will show. There has been a colossal failure of responsibility and leadership at local and at national level that we and our descendents will be paying for for a long time.

The scale of the environmental disaster that has happened to Wicklow over the last few decades will not be fully known or understood for many years. Will the many illegal dumps around the county have to be dug up and the waste dealt with properly? Will the Avoca dump leach toxins into the Avoca river for hundreds of years to come? Will the recent studies showing birth defects in those living near dumps become real tragedies in county Wicklow families unfortunate enough to have their soil and water polluted by a combination of blinkered consumerism and what can only be described as industry and official negligence?

The time scale of this waste disaster is sobering. The vast majority of the damage has been done relatively recently - almost all of it within the last few decades. But the effects of this damage will still be felt far into the future by many generations to come. The legacy we are leaving the future inhabitants of Wicklow is a toxic one. Nothing less than a revolution in popular and official attitudes to waste production and disposal is called for.