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Arthur
Morgan visits Indaver in Belgium (february 2001).
Louth County Councillor Arthur Morgan 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.
Arthur Morgan reports Councillor
Arthur Morgan was one of a delegation organised by LMFM radio station which went
over to investigate Indaver in Belgium. Indaver
is the company which 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. This
is what Arthur Morgan saw.
"There
is one huge stack bilching smoke across what is a heavily
industrialised area outside Antwerp, with no houses around. I saw another two
smaller stacks, all three stacks 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 metres by 200 metres square, 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 that the pile would be going to their "ash treatment plant." It hadn't gone yet, and we did go there either. Indaver
in its numerous glossy brochures, advertises itself as a company heavily
committed to recycling. We were
taken to see their composting facility. The facility was nothing but tokenism. 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 employed 15 people to hand sort the waste, separating cans, plastic containers etc. These people, 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 in Belgium, was
that when plastic material is taking 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, "asks Arthur, "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 Caranstown, 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, says Arthur Morgan.
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,
and 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." Meanwhile
Indaver is collecting newspapers and magazines here in Dublin, Louth, in a new
business of waste paper collection. They
have just begun to start this coolection service in Munster.
Strangely enough Dublin and
Cork are the very two places where Indaver's wholely owned company Min Chem has
hazardous waste waste incinerators. Indaver does not collect office bond paper, only glossy magazines and newsprint. Indaver
spokesperson talks of how this material is taken to a warehouse and shipped to
their Belgian associated company, Vlar Papier, which in turn, recycles the
paper, removing the plastic coating by a heat treatment. Indaver claims that this sister company in Belgium then mixs the recycled paper paper pulp with 50% fibre, from which is produced recycled newsprint. They also claimed to have amongst their buyers of this recycled newsprint the Irish Times. The Irish Times reports that they buy no recycled paper whatever from Vlar Papier, or any company in Belgium. They pruchase from 3 Scandinavian companies. There is however a substantial market for recycled newsprint in Europe, where outlets include shredded newsprint for livestock bedding. Storenso, a Swedish company which does supply the Irish Times with recycled newsprint has found both the supply and demand for recycled paper so great that it is about to open a new facility in Germany, a more central location to both supply and demand for recycled paper. "The question has to be asked", says Arthur, "just why there is no such facility in this country? Is it that the government is so obsessed with foisting unwanted incinerators on Ireland, that it cannot see the enormous potential of developing our own recycled paper industry."
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