After An Bord Pleanala allowed the Poolbeg waste incinerator to move forward, Minister for the Environment John Gormley stirred.
Steady on, he was heard to say, I intend to change national waste policy. Any day now, I'll have a well-considered, thoughtful plan to reduce waste. When that day dawns, there'll be no need for this giant waste incinerator in Poolbeg. The nation won't produce 600,000 tons of waste per year, which is the expected capacity of the new incinerator. Why, the whole island won't generate but 400,000 tons and this monstrosity at Poolbeg will be redundant and it will have to close. You don't want to be building something that will lose money in the end, do you?
Been there, done that, the planning board was thought to be mumbling to themselves. It's been five months since the Green Party went into coalition and it's been five months that Mr. Gormley's been promising a new waste management strategy. Five months gone, and it's the same rhetoric, and there's no reduction in waste. Build the incinerator before we're buried up to our necks in garbage.
The residents of Poolbeg put Mr. Gormley in office so that the incinerator would not be built in their neighborhood. They've had more than enough, thanks ever so much, of the stench of their local sewage treatment plant and they'd prefer not to have to smell the garbage.
Mr. Gormley promises to fight on, to see that the incinerator doesn't get built, even as the world moves along without him. Construction is scheduled to take place 24/7, in a mad rush to put the thing up and get it running.
Moving at a snail's pace, the minister may well be leading protests on the day of the Poolbeg incinerator grand opening. By that time, he will have to switch tactics and vow to his constituents that he will do all in his power to have the place dismantled, even as plumes of incinerated garbage waft over his head.
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