31st August 2000
My colleague, Senator Kathleen O'Meara, has been repeatedly telling us in Seanad Éireann that the mining industry had done terrible damage in North Tipperary during their activities from the fifties to the early nineties. Mining had been carried on sporadically in the Silvermines area for over 700 years but what happened in six and a half centuries was like a cat scratching the mountain compared to the devastation caused by modern methods in the last fifty years.
There is a huge crater filled with water, pH 3 to 4, totally unstable underground caverns over which the land is subsiding here and there so that an unsuspecting sheep, tractor or you or me could disappear down 100 feet. A local ex-miner told me where not to go but the whole place was badly fenced and, I would have thought, very dangerous. An office building looked as though it had been hurriedly evacuated when the enemy was within half a mile, papers are scattered everywhere and computers bashed in. There are tailing ponds nearby with dust containing God knows what, being blown all over nice clean washing out to dry and lovingly tended cabbage patches.
The last straw for the locals is the proposal by an international waste management company to use the quarry and adjacent underground caverns as a dump, not only for the inhabitants of North Tipperary but for a population the size of Munster. This waste is to be brought in by road and rail and the whole project would be a Godsend to many politicians because it would postpone, note I write postpone, not solve, our waste management problem which no one seems to want to face.
The Environmental Protection Agency has refused a licence for this super dump so that may be the end of it even though the Waste Management Company say they will appeal.
Everywhere in the country there are signs up "No Dump Here", "No Incinerator", and so on. Frequently there are additional signs pointing out that Dumps, incinerators or whatever, cause Cancer, birth defects, or worse. Those doctors involved in Irish Doctors Environmental Association do make good points but the rest of us will asked our opinions on environmental issues more and more.
Isn't it unbelievable that in the year 2000 50% of private water schemes are infected with E.Coli? That for the second year in succession that water in Sligo has to be boiled because of E.Coli? This is disgusting and why is it happening? It is not just the mining moguls that cause pollution, it could be the local piggery. Slurry is still spread no matter what the weather. Teageasc has beseeched farmers not to spread slurry when it is raining. If they do the E.Coli will run off into the nearest waterway on to an adjacent lake which may be the water source for the local town. And then people wonder why the water has to be boiled.
We can back up our public health colleagues when it comes to banning eating shellfish from polluted areas. We can report cases of food poisoning to the Food Safety Authority. On all these public health matters we know where we are, but to try to be helpful on environmental issues is a different matter.
Mobile phones, do they or do they not cause brain tumours? The response that we really don't know is not considered good enough by the general public. Is an earpiece less likely to cause trouble than a hand held set? Mobile phone masts, pylons - if there is one thing I know they are not very attractive in our lovely landscape, but do they cause Leukaemia? By the way, have you seen any of the mobile phone masts that are supposed to look like trees? They are hilarious and I don't know if they are more or less harmful than the unadorned ones.
Giving our views about dioxins from incinerators is fraught with danger, too. Of course they are dangerous to health but we cannot please everyone. Those opposed to dumps say incinerators are better but the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) factor comes into play with both.
It seems such a pity that we can't go further back up the waste solution pyramid and put more thought and time into recycling and minimising waste. These are areas we can promote with equanimity. And as for composting! What could be more holistic?
We are expected to have the answers to so many questions to which no-one has the answers! I am very doubtful about downfacing a distinguished epidemiologist like Sir Richard Doll and if he says the answers to some questions are not yet available, I feel I have to agree with him. But it is profoundly difficult to explain this to local groups who have decided a proposed change in environment will be the end of them.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
