Council has spent €3 million on cleaning up foul smelling waste site in Rathcabbin

Tipperary County Council has spent approximately €3 million on cleaning up a site in Rathcabbin, where a company had dumped huge amounts of waste that it had hoped to convert into compost, the September meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District was told.

Cllr Michael O’ Meara congratulated the council on the work it had carried out over the past four years in moving the foul-smelling waste off the site that had previously been occupied by a company, Shannon Vermicomposting.

He said the council had dealt successfully with a tricky and disastrous situation. Deploying heavy lorries to take the waste off the site and transporting it to the council’s landfill at Ballyveny had a terrible impact on local roads that now needed to be re-instated.

Cllr O’ Meara asked council officials about what was being done to recoup the €3 million the local authority had to spend to clean up the site; this was taxpayers’ money. Was the council going to go after Shannon Vermicomposting to get that money back?

Michael Moroney, senior executive officer in the council’s environment section, said the site had been almost cleared of the waste; the small amount left would be gone by the year’s end.

He confirmed that the council was looking at initiating proceedings in the High Court to recover the costs it spent clearing the site. “It is our intention to pursue it, and we are pursuing it.”

Cllr Ryan O’ Meara said funds would have to be put aside for roads leading to the landfill at Ballyveny as they too had been damaged due to the volumes of waste transported to the council dump from Rathcabbin.