Cork Waste Plan Alert

cork | environment | press release Tuesday January 06, 2004 16:46 by Joe Noonan - Noonan Linehan Carroll Coffey jnoonan at nlcc dot ie 54 North Main Street, Cork

Waste managers never sleep.

Cork's County Waste Management plan is being reviewed by the County Manager. This Plan will govern how waste is managed in Cork for the next five years at least, and may pave the way for incineration. A press notice during the Christmas holidays was the only public announcement of this review. Time for making representations on the Plan runs out soon...

On Saturday the 27th of December 2003 Cork County Council published an advertisement in the Irish Examiner announcing that it iscommencing the preparation of a new Waste Management Plan for the County. It added that the current Waste Management Plan may be viewed at the County Council offices at County Hall, or at Annabella Mallow, or at Kent Street Clonakilty or at the Council website.

Most importantly it stated that “written representations in relation to the matter maybe made before 4.00pm on Monday the 1st of March 2004 to Ms Katherine Walshe, Director of Environment, Cork County Council, County Hall, Cork”.



COMMENT

The Waste Management Plan is a critically important document for anyone interested in how the County manages waste. As a result of recent changes in the law, the objectives contained in a Waste Management Plan override objectives contained in theCounty Development Plan. As a result the very recently adopted Cork County Development Plan may have an objective rejecting a particular type of waste disposal or proposing a particular hierarchy of disposal methods but if these conflict with objectives in the Waste Management Plan then the Waste Management Plan prevails.


Another very important change in the law allows the forthcoming plan to be made, not by the elected members as was the case hitherto, but by the County Manager. Additionally, the Manager is now empowered to include objectives in the Waste Management Plan even where they would materially contravene the County Development Plan. He can do this once he notifies his intention to do so by advertisement in the press. This material contravention can then be carried through without the approval of the elected members.


Everyone familiar with the history of the Indaver Planning Application will know how decisive the role of the elected members was in upholding the County Development Plan and in particular in rejecting the management attempt to win support for a material contravention resolution. Under the new law the Manager is able to by-pass the elected members when adopting the objectives in the Waste Management Plan. Those objectives may in turn be relied on by a Developer seeking Planning Permission for an Incinerator or Landfill.


The Council is obliged to give at least two months for representations to be made and that period is now running. The announcement of an opportunity for individuals or community groups to make representations may have gone unnoticed as it appeared, to my knowledge, only during the holiday period.