Council transporting four truck-loads of waste per day from Rathcabbin site

TIPPERARY County Council is presently transporting four truck-loads of waste per day from Rathcabbin to a landfill site.
It is the endgame of a saga which has been ongoing since 2003.
In the latter half of 2003 locals began complaining about an “appalling smell” coming from the company Shannon Vermicomposting which was just located outside Rathcabbin village.
Shannon Vermicomposting had received planning permission for ten mushroom tunnels and ten composting units. Under that permission, the composting units were to supply compost for the ten mushroom tunnels. However, local councillors pointed out that the company had grown way beyond what was stated in the planning permission and there was unauthorised waste material now on the site, being driven in by trucks from various locations in Ireland.
Eventually the County Council took a successful case against the company in the courts and the company had to close down in 2005.
Left behind was a very large amount of material stockpiled on concrete slabs and adjacent lands. This material was stored in large piles of approximately 35,000 cubic metres under plastic covers. The plastic covers were kept in place with approximately 21,500 tyres of varying sizes (car, lorry and oversized tyres). Approximately 189 cubic metres of leachate was also stored in 22 underground tanks (the leachate was subsequently removed by Tipperary County Council).
The compost material stored at the site included “sewage sludge and food waste.”
It was also stated that the compost material “displays low respiration activity in the upper reaches of the piles and can broadly be classified as a 'stabilised biowaste' material."
In 2005 the High Court issued an order demanding that the waste material be removed. It also ordered that contaminated water in underground chambers be removed and chambers made safe by infilling with granular fill.
It was pointed out several times during subsequent years that the waste had been made secure to prevent it from leaching into the water table of the surrounding region. Locals were worried about contaminating waste leaching into rivers and streams and into the River Shannon, but were told that this wasn't happening.
Finally, in 2019 the Council said it was moving the 35,000 cubic metres of waste to the landfill site at Ballaghveny between Cloughjordan and Toomevara. Covid intervened, and the work didn't start until a couple of months ago.
Cllr Michael O'Meara told the Midland Tribune that good progress is being made. “There's a substantial hole there now. The Council is removing four truckloads a day. It will all have been removed within 18 months.”
He said the locals were pleased to see the work finally happening after such a long wait.
“Once all the waste has been removed,” he added, “we'll be asking the Council executive to upgrade the small backroads, which weren't designed for this kind of heavy traffic.”
During a Council meeting some months ago Cllr Joe Hannigan pointed out that at Ballaghveny the waste is being deposited in a layering system, which means a layer of the vermicomposting waste, then a layer of building rubble, then another layer of the vermicomposting waste, followed by a layer of rubble on top of that, etc.
A Council meeting in 2019 was told it could take six years to remove all the waste from the site. However, the timeframe now is 18 months.
Ballaghveny closed in 2011 but it reopened again in Spring 2021. The waste licence at the landfill permits acceptance of non-hazardous waste including household and business waste as well as construction and demolition waste, such as soil and composting waste.