Green leader in ‘secret’ meetings over second incinerator

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/green-leader-in-secret-meetings-over-second-incinerator-for-city-1426003.html

Click title for direct link to Irish Independent article

Green Leader in ‘secret’ meetings over second incinerator for city

GREEN ministers John Gormley and Eamon Ryan held ‘secret’ meetings with representatives of a US company seeking to build another incinerator in Dublin.

The Energy Answers company’s proposed €200m facility off the N7 motorway in Rathcoole, Co Dublin, would compete with the planned Poolbeg incinerator in Mr Gormley’s own constituency.

Locals expressed fears that Mr Gormley would prefer to have the Rathcoole facility running so the Poolbeg incinerator would not be needed.

Fine Gael Senator Frances Fitzgerald questioned yesterday why Mr Gormley and Mr Ryan were meeting “secretly” with people who were “in favour of incineration”.

“The Green policy seems to have changed entirely on the matter — not that long ago the then Deputy John Gormley was staunchly opposing an incinerator in his own constituency,” she said.

However, a spokesman for Mr Gormley said the meeting was purely for the purposes of learning about the project.

“The department does not give any sort of blessing to any specific development because the department and the minister is absolutely precluded from involvement in the planning process,” he added.

Mr Gormley was strongly opposed to incineration and committed to making recycling the “cornerstone” of waste policy, he said.

Details of the meetings came to light in response to a parliamentary question by Ms Fitzgerald and Green Party TD Paul Gogarty, who attended protest meetings against the proposed Rathcoole incinerator in their Dublin Mid-West constituency.

Mr Gormley met Anne Butler, an environmental consultant hired by Energy Answers (An alias for Covanta-Poolbeg? –Blog Text Insert-), last July. Previously, she was director of the Environmental Protection Agency for 10 years and president of the Institute of Engineers for one year.

Mr Ryan met the company in January but said this was essentially a “listening exercise”.

Energy Answers was able to bypass traditional planning procedures after An Bord Pleanala ruled, last December, that its project was a strategic infrastructural development. It is awaiting a Bord Pleanala hearing as opposition grows in Rathcoole.

Rathcoole Community Council spokesman Sean Reid said 400 people had attended a meeting last month in protest at the incinerator plans. His group previously warned that Mr Gormley might want the Rathcoole incinerator built before the Poolbeg incinerator.

“People can’t help wondering and possibly there would be an element of people putting two and two together. But the indications were given by representatives of his party that Mr Gormley is not (in favour of the incinerator),” he said.

Mr Reid said his group had evidence from US experts that it was possible to recycle up to 80pc of waste — and landfill the rest — rather than rely on incineration.

“We don’t feel that incineration is the best method of disposing of waste,” he said.

Indoors

Energy Answers has said the facility, described as a ‘Resource Recovery Project’, would operate to the highest environmental standards, with all waste operations occurring indoors. (Except when they don’t. Covanta has a recent record of unlawfully exceeding Dioxin limits at all its incinerators in the highly polluted state of New Jersey. When known as Ogden, Covanta was cited by the US legal system for 6,000 violations in just two years. –Blog Text Insert-).

A spokeswoman confirmed Ms Butler met Mr Gormley on behalf of the company but said this had been purely to inform him about the project.

The company has secured an undertaking from the Department of Defence that it will not object to the incinerator, which would be sited less than five kilometres from the Air Corps’ Baldonnell Aerodrome.

–End of Irish Independent article (text corrected, July 14, 2008)

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For a paper owned by Billionaires it seems the Irish Independent actually does inform the people. Surprisingly, for a paper owned by a “trust” it seems the Irish Times has slipped back to its past imperial role where it did not necessarily work on behalf of the peasant people.

Is EPA-Ireland Inside The Galway Tent?

Is EPA-Ireland Inside The Galway Tent?

Environment Minister Mr Gormley (“secretly” says the Indo) met Anne Butler, an environmental consultant hired by Energy Answers/Covanta.

Previously, she was Director of the Environmental Protection Agency for 10 years and president of the Institute of Engineers for one year.

(Butler was hired by Energy-Answers-Covanta in July 2007)

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/green-leader-in-secret-meetings-over-second-incinerator-for-city-1426003.html
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/07/story257079427.asp

————–

Anne Butler.
An Earner.

DIT:
Currently working as an environmental consultant, she was on the board of the EPA for ten years, and headed up the EPA’s waste division which for the first time regulated waste facilities in Ireland at a time of great change.

http://www.dit.ie/DIT/news/2005/anne-butler.html

———————————–
CRH:
Anne Butler joined the EPA when it was set up in 1993 and left last April (2003). She said she was working as a consultant for CRH at a “strategic” and “high level”.

CRH subsidiary Roadstone Dublin was drawn into the illegal dumping controversy in Wicklow when hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste were found on CRH lands at Blessington.
The company is in talks with Wicklow County Council and must apply to the EPA for a licence to clean up the site.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/07/story257079427.asp
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Which stinks more?

• DCC-DDDA’s politicially managed Sewage Factory at Poolbeg

or the

• Revolving Doors between “consulting” businesses and waste-to-toxics companies HQ’ed offshore and EPA-Ireland and Bord Pleanala?

1. An ex–Indaver employee is with EPA-Ireland.
2. July 2007/8: Energy Answers/Covanta hired an ex-Ten-Year-EPA-Ireland Director.
3. April 2008: Covanta hired a senior ex-EPA-USA employee.
4. Taoiseach Ahern appointed his friends to the management levels of DDDA and Dublin Port Company.
   
5. Currently an ex-employee of RPS is on the executive board of Ireland’s An Bord Pleanala. This board apparently uses political science to override its knowledgeable and honest inspectors (Cork, Meath, Poolbeg).

DCC has spent 19 million Euro of taxpayer money on “consultants” to promote Waste-To-Toxics incineration. DCC’s chief pro-incinerator business consultant is RPS, apparently focused on certain planning matters and legal tick-boxes. RPS is also involved with the Poolbeg Sewage factory (under a different name on the site signage) and also apparently with Shell in Mayo.

The stink over five years from the Poolbeg Sewage factory and the unexplained new payment of €36 million is the prime example of the capabilities of DCC-DDDA. This is the smell of the outcomes of political management. Incinerators do not smell. And like tobacco-industry best-available-excuses you can not prove they compromise your health.

Guns don’t kill, Incinerators do.
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More:
http://galwaytent.blogspot.com/2008/04/incinerator-revolving-doors-at-epa-abp.html

EPA Uses Political Science – Not Medical Science.

The EU’s newest standards for air pollution are much less effective than the ‘disappointing’ US standards.

Incinerators are not effectively monitored for deadly PM2.5 particle pollution.
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“We know that soot (PM2.5 particle pollution) can cause significant harm, especially to children and senior citizens, at levels well below this standard,” said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club�s environmental quality program. “

By choosing politics over science, EPA is jeopardizing the health of our communities.”

“It’s disappointing that the EPA (USA) has once again put industry before public health,” said Alice McKeown, air analyst for the Sierra Club. “This decision goes against the combined recommendations of over 2,000 peer-reviewed studies, medical and health groups and the EPA’s own independent science advisers.
It was clearly based on political science, not medical science.”

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2006-09-21.asp

http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/soot/
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Greenmandering in Dublin

Greenmandering in Dublin South East


According to The Nervous Little Green Man cycling back to Ringsend from under the green slime generated by his DCC-DDDA’s toxic dump on Sandymount Strand, the Dublin South East Area is to be Greenmandered.

To call this a Gerrymander would degrade Sinn Fein to Green Party status. A status consistent with brown circles and shoelaces and people disappearing inside the said brown circles.

John Gormley barely got elected by as little as twenty three 5th preferences in the past two elections. Driving a coach and horses through Dublin South East will remove at least 5000 anti-Gormley votes – that is the 5,000 people who were confidence-tricked to vote Green Party in 2007.

DDDA’s empire will then be extended from Sean Moore Park into Irishtown and Sandymount up to Lansdowne Road to bypass the already compromised planning culture.

John Gormley is already under construction on the banks of The Dodder, after apparently blocking public comments on his blog. Another winner for the Galway Tent.

http://www.johngormley.com/underconstruction.html
Fianna Fail’s John Gormley Under Construction

Hello Suckers
Mr. Gormley might gain some votes in “The Inner City” by providing subsidised housing on Sandymount Strand at “Poolbeg”, diddling the taxpayers and benefiting The Galway Tent. As at Sean More Road, the real health hazards of living on a dump will be suppressed as “there is no proof”. For each flat priced by Galway Tent estate agents at one million Euro the taxpayer will be extracted to the tune of E750,000, to the cynical green bongo-drums of ‘social justice’ in The Four Seasons.

Thus the Green Party may transfer Billions of Taxpayer Euro to Big Money developers.
And save the four pyramid-scheme companies, allegedly, who comprise the small Irish Stock Index (Cement & Banks funded by Irish pension plans). The Irish Stock Index includes the bank which transferred ownership of Sandymount Strand to a private corporation and a cement company which created a causeway for its trucks, outside the law (allegedly as per transcripts).

How else can liquidity events occur for flats located on a Toxic Dump beside a Waste-To-Toxics factory? If you know, come inside the tent.

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Community Gain – Ripping The Taxpayers
In 2008 taxpayers paid €35,000 to repair the 3 metre seawall breached outside the law by a cement company. This seawall breach flooded local houses but did not dent profits of the pyramid scheme banks or cement companies, allegedly.

Did the cement company pay for this repair? Its not likely they eve donated the cement. It’s more likely the taxpayers were royally charged for the cement. That’s community gain in DCC-DDDA lingo.

And despite the taxpayer millions spent on PR propaganda, DCC-DDDA has not informed the general public about the €35,000. Currently DCC-DDDA is spinning about its absurd Urban Beach – this Big Lie hides the fact that DCC-DDDA actually stole the whole of the real beach at Beach Road.

Furthermore, DCC-DDDA does not conduct, or perhaps more likely prevents peer-reviewed health science about the millions of tons of toxic waste they dumped on the real beach at Sandymount Strand.

Covanta Alias is Energy Answers?

James Joyce … Sandymount Strand … Long Kesh … The Maze … Ogden … Covanta … Energy Answers … Incinerator … Waste-to-Toxics … Waste-to-Energy … DCC … DDDA … DCC-DDDA … IRA … Fianna Fail … Sinn Fein … World’s Oldest Profession … Consultant
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Why does Covanta-Energy-Answers-Rathcoole have an “office” in the Caribbean’s Virgin Islands?

Why does Covanta-Poolbeg have an office in Luxembourg?

• Why did Enron, also billed as an “energy” company, maintain Special Purpose Entities around the Caribbean?

In 2007, Energy Answers sold its U.S. operating company, EAC Operations, Inc., including all of its operating assets to Covanta Energy Corporation. This sale involves all of Energy Answers’ operating enterprises in the Northeast U.S.

Energy Answers International will continue to maintain offices in Albany, New York; St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands; and Dublin, Ireland; and continue to pursue new project development opportunities.

Why?

_______________________________________
NOTEs:

If true, why is Energy Answers International a separate legal entity to Energy Answers (USA) and to Covanta, and Covanta’s tens of similiarly named corporations ?

The Enron scandal was a financial scandal involving Enron Corporation (NYSE ticker symbol: ENE) and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, that was revealed in late 2001. After a series of revelations involving irregular accounting procedures bordering on fraud, perpetrated throughout the 1990s, it left Enron on the verge of undergoing the lowest bankruptcy in history by mid-November 2001.

Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, the mastermind behind Enron’s complex network of offshore partnerships and questionable accounting practices, was indicted on November 1, 2002, by a federal grand jury in Houston on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.

Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.

http://www.energyanswers.com/our_company/history/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

So Called Magic Machines

Friday, June 27, 2008

CREDIT: Marcia Downham/Times International waste management expert Dr. Paul Connett trashed the plasma gasification plants Metro Vancouver proposes to build in coming years to deal with its garbage.

Debate sizzled during a Monday night forum in Abbotsford over Metro Vancouver’s plan to build up to six waste-to-energy incinerators, which its detractors say would pose health risks to valley residents.

“As a society we need to have better leadership and really push the basics of reuse, recycle and compost. We should not rely on so called magic machines that claim to cleanly burn our waste,” said Dr. Paul Connett, one of the world’s leading experts in waste management and a strong advocate for recycling.

Waste-to-energy plants are “incinerators in disguise” and are just a “money trap” hyped up by promoters, he told about 250 people who came to listen to the panel presentation at City Hall.

If Metro Vancouver approves the six incinerators, at a cost of up to $2 billion, valley residents could face serious health implications, he said.

The plants would waste valuable resources, including the resource of trash, and will undermine the efforts to recycle and to consume less, he argued.

_________________

© Abbotsford Times 2008

… click title for full article at url

Only Reported in Belfast

Reported in Belfast, Not Reported in Dublin.
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Bad weather bursts Meath anti-Incinerator balloon

Saturday, June 21, 2008

A planned balloon launch by an Anti-Incinerator lobby in County Meath has been cancelled due to bad weather.

The North East Anti-Incineration Group is campaigning against plans to build a second facility in the county – planning permission has already been granted for an incinerator near Duleek.

However the group will still be holding a submissions advice clinic in Nobber Parish Hall from 2pm this afternoon.

European Incinerators Import Mexican Dioxin Sources.

• The Beast Must Be Fed: Mexico now sends PCBs to Europe for incineration, exposing the compounds to loss at sea.

• “Incineration is a Dinosaur Technology.” : Neil Carman, a former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality inspector who now works with the Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter. Carmen said the EPA’s position is “absurd” because “incineration is a dinosaur technology.”

• Carman said there are EPA-approved, non-burn technologies that could be used to dispose of the compounds in Mexico.

• Environmentalists say the Texas Incinerator released 1,933 pounds of PCBs into the air in 2006.

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Full Article from Houston & Texas News is here:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5834705.html

June 12, 2008, 11:44PM
Port Arthur site set to burn toxic PCBs
EPA about to let Mexican imports be destroyed there

By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

<!– –>PORT ARTHUR — The west end of this Gulf Coast refinery town is a weedy pocket of poverty, with blocks of shuttered storefronts and blue tarps still covering the rooftops of houses damaged by Hurricane Rita nearly three years ago.

Hilton Kelley, 47, sees his neighborhood’s commercial activity moribund, its residents sick, its children with nothing to do, and he blames the fire-and-fume-belching cluster of oil and petrochemical plants around Port Arthur.

Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to grant a request by the operator of a Port Arthur incinerator to import up to 20,000 tons of highly toxic PCBs from Mexico for their disposal. To many people living on the city’s predominantly black west end, the proposal is the ultimate affront.

“This adds insult to injury,” said Kelley, who heads the Community In-Power and Development Association. “Enough is enough already.”

Veolia Environmental Services’ petition comes nearly 30 years after legislation that banned the manufacture of PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, also prohibited bringing them into the United States. The EPA ruled in 1996 that the chemical compounds may be brought into the country for incineration, but a federal appeals court overturned the decision.

Agency officials, echoing the reasons for reversing the ban a decade ago, argue that the destruction of PCBs in this country is safer than allowing stockpiles to fester in Mexico and other nations.

But critics contend that there are cleaner, safer disposal methods for PCBs. When burned, they produce dioxin, which is linked to cancer, brain damage, reproductive problems and other ailments in humans.

Despite precautions, incinerators emit minute quantities that enter the food chain through meat, dairy products and fish — leading some to wonder why Port Arthur residents should again shoulder such an onerous burden.

“They’re getting all of the emissions and none of the prosperity,” said Jim Blackburn, a Houston-based environmental attorney who represented Port Arthur residents in a recent lawsuit over Motiva Enterprises’ expansion plans. “Why should we make an exception to put more pollution on a community that already has taken on more than its fair share?”

Environmentalists have dubbed the area “The Cancer Belt,” but there is no proven link to the refineries and Jefferson County’s cancer rate, which was 23 percent higher than the state overall, according to the Texas Cancer Registry’s most recent data.

Refinery to expand

The health problem is part of the plight of Port Arthur, where the median household income is about $35,000 a year, less than half of Sugar Land. While there isn’t much left of downtown, new houses, restaurants and big-box stores are sprouting along the corridor leading to Beaumont and away from the biggest plants.

Last year Motiva began an expansion that will more than double the capacity of its Port Arthur refinery to 600,000 barrels a day by 2010 and make it the largest in the country. The plant is across the street from the Carver Terrace public housing project.

The Army also began shipping 1.7 million gallons of a nerve gas byproduct called hydrolysate from Indiana to Veolia’s incinerator, located about five miles west of downtown on Texas 73. The contract is worth $49 million.

Veolia applied to import PCBs in November 2006 before receiving the Army contract. Under the proposal, the company would ship the compounds by truck through Houston to Port Arthur — a distance of about 460 miles from entry points in Brownsville and Laredo.

Mexico now sends PCBs to Europe for incineration, exposing the compounds to loss at sea. The transportation cost for overseas shipment is at least three times more expensive than moving the waste from Monterrey, Mexico, to Port Arthur, according to the company.

Plant’s estimate

The Veolia facility, permitted to handle up to 150,000 tons of hazardous waste per year, burns between 20 million and 30 million pounds of PCB wastes from domestic sources annually. Mitch Osborne, the plant’s general manager, said smokestack tests show the incinerator destroys more than 99 percent of the material.

But environmentalists are not so sure about the plant’s safety record, pointing to the 1,933 pounds of PCBs that it reported releasing into the air in 2006, the most recent data available.

The plant alone accounted for more than two-thirds of the PCB releases nationwide, according to the federal Toxics Release Inventory, which is based on industry estimates.

Osborne said the plant’s estimate is wrong because of a bookkeeping error. In correspondence with the EPA last month, company officials said the amount should be less than one pound.

“If we didn’t think we could do it safely, then we wouldn’t bring it here,” Osborne said. “We have proven our capability over 15 years. It’s safer to burn here than to leave it in place.”

The EPA apparently agrees.

Position called absurd

The agency is proposing a one-year exemption for Veolia to import and burn the PCBs because the company “has demonstrated that no unreasonable risk to health or the environment would result,” EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said.

The agency also contends that because the proposal poses no unreasonable health hazards to Port Arthur’s residents, there is no “environmental justice” issue.

Neil Carman, a former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality inspector who now works with the Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter, said the EPA’s position is “absurd” because “incineration is a dinosaur technology.”

Carman said there are EPA-approved, non-burn technologies that could be used to dispose of the compounds in Mexico. A process called chemical dechlorination, for example, treats the PCB waste with a liquid agent that breaks down the toxins by removing their chlorine components.

“It’s inexcusable for Veolia to burn PCBs because they don’t all burn up,” Carman said, adding that the Sierra Club would sue if the EPA grants the plant’s request. “This could set a precedent that opens up the floodgates.”

matthew.tresaugue@chron.com

Outlaw Incinerators Are Immune

Industry Myth: “The incineration industry is the most tightly regulated and monitored industry in the UK.“

Fact: This is a complete red herring. The regulations are meaningless and the monitoring is a joke.

The regulations are based on what is technically feasible rather than what is safe.

• There is little to no monitoring of some of the most toxic substances created by incineration.
• Dioxin monitoring occurs no more than twice a year.
• Incinerator operators regularly break their legal limits with impunity.

A report released by Greenpeace this year, based on the Environment Agency’s own records of emissions breaches reported by incinerator operators,

• Greenpeace revealed that England’s 10 operating incinerators had exceeded their 1999 and 2000 pollution limits 553 times.
• Only one Environment Agency prosecution resulted.

The Greenpeace report reached the inevitable conclusion that incineration is an unreliable and dangerous technology incapable of being regulated with proper regard to human health and the environment.

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Sources:
East Galway Against Incineration,
http://toxicdump.net/incineratorMyths.htm

GreenPeace
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/3809.PDF

Inferno At Incinerator

Pollution billows from the incinerator Thursday morning, June 12, 2008.

It was the second fire this year at the incinerator, located in Panama City, Florida.
…
The threat of fire sparking in an incinerator cannot be eliminated, Lovett added. “It’s an issue that comes with operation of an incinerator.”
…

“It will be smoking for a few days probably. I’ll dread coming to work tomorrow if that wind shifts and we have to breath that in,” Creamer said.

By late afternoon Thursday, Lovett said the smoke had almost entirely dissipated. “There is no health risk.”