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Updated at 1.40pm
THE CONTROVERSIAL POOLBEG incinerator will fire up in the coming days – two decades after the project was first proposed.
Managing director of Covanta Ireland John Daly confirmed in an interview with Morning Ireland that the Dublin 4 plant was taking its first delivery of waste.
It would be what’s generally referred to as “black bag waste,” he said – waste that’s not going for recycling. The actual incineration process won’t start for a few days – probably at the weekend, he said.
Only one of the two boilers at the state-of-the-art plant is operational at the moment, he said. The facility would be operating at only a fraction of its full capacity, Daly explained. Full production will be reached by around September, it’s planned.
Photos taken at the plant today showed trucks delivering the first batches of rubbish to the facility.
Local opposition
The plant – which will process waste from the four Dublin local authorities – was initially proposed in 1997.
After years of hold-ups construction of the the Public Private Partnership (PPP) project finally began in late 2014.
Dublin City Councillors had voted against the project just weeks earlier – but Dublin City Chief Executive Owen Keegan insisted the facility was needed and made commercial sense.
Many locals in the nearby areas of Ringsend, Irishtown and Sandymount still have concerns about it, however – regarding emissions and traffic in particular.
120 trucks per day will drive to and from the plant over a six day week, according to Covanta. Deliveries – even ones from the south – will be via the M50 and the Port Tunnel, the company insists, although waste from the immediate local area will be brought straight to the facility.
Strict limits have been set for emissions at the plant, and in an update on Poolbeg issued in recent weeks the Environmental Protection Agency said its inspectors had been visiting the site regularly in the last few months.
Covanta Ireland has said data on emissions and furnace temperature will be displayed on the company’s website and updated every half hour.
‘Hot commissioning’ has been taking place at the plant in recent weeks – resulting in an occasional steam plume above the incinerator. The process involves the drying out of bricks in the boilers and cleaning out of the boiler pipes.
According to a statement on the Covanta website:
The hot commissioning of the plant is ongoing with the steam blows almost 80% completed. Over the coming days trucks will be seen delivering waste to the plant to enable commissioning of the weighbridge and bunker cranes.
It is expected that the first fire of waste will occur within seven working days of first waste acceptance. Dublin Waste to Energy will send out a further information bulletin closer to this time.
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The London underground has an under 60 minutes target to reopen a line after a one under event. Here the line remains closed most of the day. Tragic event but no reason for this to have such a massive knock on as a result
@nelly: who cares how long it takes . Maybe the time could be used to make a call or text someone that they haven’t spoken to in a while and also reflect on how there are more important things in life than being on time for work .
@nelly: i would be more comcerned about the pyschological trauma the driver and other staff, even passengers who saw the incident, than being concerned about reopening the lines in a hurry
@Ruth McCann: absolutely the driver has to deal with the result of an action he had no control over. And the act of throwing yourself under a train is probably has the most adverse effect of any form of suicide that is witnessed by others
@nelly: “a one under event”. Wow your compassion astounds me
@Caren Dempsey: my thoughts exactly. That was a person, someone’s son/daughter/mother/father/brother/sister.
@nelly: On RTÉ Morning Ireland earlier this morning, Barry Kenny of Irish Rail indicated that the aim was to have the line reopen within two and a half to three hours. Can you tell us where your timeframe of “most of the day” is from please?
@nelly: So, you are saying that if someone gets hit and killed by a train in London and 9am, police, ambulance, pathology, cleanup etc. will have arrived and gone with the next train arriving at 10am? You need a serious dose of reality and a lesson in empathy.
@nelly: Why don’t you move to London?
@Peter Cavey: that is what is done.. Worked on it so know. Nothing to do with empathy. The act of throwing under a train is one of the most dangerous things to happen to a driver and other passengers as a collision at any speed will result in flying glass and other projectiles that can and have killed
@nelly: terribly informed comment. Besides the fact that May is green ribbon mental health month and that with mental health being such a big issue in this country this should be treated with a lot more sensitivity, all of iarnrod eireann nationally is about 2% the size of London underground (in terms of passenger journeys per day). It’s like expecting Michelin star service from abrakebabra…
@nelly: what a stupid statement
@Darren moore: the gridlock and disruption to the travelling public is the issue too.
@Caren Dempsey: that is what it’s called
@nelly: If London wants to to pride itself on how swiftly it cleans up after inconvenient tragedies, that’s their business. We don’t need to be like London.
@I Crow: what’s ill-informed about it. It has the same effect here as anywhere else and the mental health issues has nothing to do with the comment I made.
@Cyclops: what’s stupid about it. Its a fact. Not my fact
@nelly: I just told you what was ill informed, comparing the Dart services to London underground which has earns approximately 50 times more revenue. So saying “it has the same effect here as everywhere else” isn’t true when London has significantly more resources and more revenue at steak as a result of a line stoppage.
Your disregard for sensitivity around mental health has everything to do with the comment you made. Not trying to and a go at you I just think it’s an unfairand insensitive comparison
@I Crow: if you are delayed here or elsewhere, the effect is the same. The reason for the delay is irrelevant but the impact on the travelling public has got to be minimised.
If someone is going to throw themselves under a train, the mental health intervention is to late at that stage. My sensitivity would be
More for the driver and passengers, who are forced to witness this by an action, not of their making and that will stay with them and my be the trigger for their decline into mental health issues themselves.
@nelly: There’s no place for efficiency and consideration of other passengers in such a “compassionate” country. Noone needs to go to work, or to their UCD exams or their hospital appointments this morning. We should all just let it come to a standstill because that’s how to address mental health issues effectively!
@dearg doom: correct
@nelly: the effect of a delay is of course the same, that’s stating the obvious. The resources of an organisation to deal with an unforeseen circumstance is the key difference which you keep avoiding. Nobody mentioned mental health intervention and nobody thinks it’s fair on the driver. What I’m saying is how can you possible expect Irish rail to be as quick and efficient as the London underground with 2% if their resources? You haven’t addressed that point once in your comparison you’re us a just going on tangents about the driver which of course everyone agrees with
@nelly: stop talking
@nelly: jeez who cares how long it takes.
@nelly: you mean to tell me if that was a member of your family, you’d be happy for everyone to “clear” it up promptly and just for everyone to get on with their day. If an incident like this happens to someone’s family member, there is no going back to “normal”, because there is no “normal again for those left to cope and try to pick up their lives and understand what happened and why!
@I Crow: Irish rail don’t deal with it. The emergency services do. The problem here is the length of time to catalog, recover and remove the body.
@nelly: time for you to shut it!
@nelly: and another thing nelly, it’s the very fact that people are so caught up in their own busy lives, running here and there and meeting schedules, that things like this happen. Maybe if someone asked another person are they alright, or sat with them and talked, then just maybe we wouldn’t have so many of these incidents. Modern life has gotten so busy, and people become disconnected from each other that we don’t notice they might need help, or if they are just looking there for someone who might care, or even smile at them…it could sometimes make all the difference.
@nelly: Less than 5 hours from the tragic accident to when they reopened the line is ‘most of the day’? You need to learn how to read time.
@Ciara Baines: 4 hours to long
@Freda Hanratty: can’t babysit everyone
@Freda Hanratty: I’d have more of a concern as to the effect their actions would have had on the innocent driver, passengers, and emergency services, that had to deal with the aftermath of their action.
@nelly: have you been tested for aspergers?
@Tony Stanley: “There’s no cure for being a C£$t” – The Hound
@Tony Stanley: have you been tested. Full stop
@tweetforjunk: bohoo princess
@nelly: Folks: at this stage I think a certain person is just trolling – or has no sense of situation. A person died this morning, it really does not matter how long the trains were delayed for, that is truely a “first world” issue.
I’ve never been slow about letting IR (and the world) know about their many failures, but on occaisions like this, they and the emergency services can take the time they NEED.
Our first thoughts should be for the poor individual who, if it was suicide, suffered so much that their problems became too much for them, indeed if it was an accident, no body would wish such on another soul.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam
@nelly: London has a population 6 times Dublin’s….Dublin rail services are not in the same ball park…Not comparable
@Caren Dempsey: I think you’d find that is the correct railway terminology for a person colliding with a train. Do railway definitions offend you?
@Stephen Hyland: common sense offends him more
@nelly: move to london.
Rip to the deceased person. I hope you have found peace. So tragic. Thinking of the driver and anyone who may have witnessed this incident.
@shaz: maybe it was a worker who wasn’t expecting this train, not in service, to arrive. We have to wait for the investigation.
@Deborah Behan: if you look at article it says updated at midday. Previous to that it said tragic accident after man walked on to tracks hence my earlier comment
Cycling today and no traffic. Lovely weather. If it wasn’t for all the cars I’d have fresh air too. Long live the bike
@Irish Political GIF: but you said “ there’s no traffic “
@Irish Political GIF: “Cycling today and no traffic” followed by ‘If it wasn’t for all the cars I’d have fresh air” – which is it? No traffic or all the cars??
Ultimately probably not. But if I were to lose someone I loved to suicide I’d spend forever asking myself if there was something I could have done as opposed to an accident which can’t be prevented.
Because the Dart is off there are so many cars on the roads .Traffic bumper to bumper in Baldoyle +Sutton…but the buses are full+there are many people stranded at bus stops….so employers +teachers please understand +take it easy on the employees +pupils who are late…it’s not their fault.
An accident on the DART line or on our motorway and it is closed up to one day, Depriving people of transport. Surely with modern equipment the scene could be photographed and traffic released quickly. Other countries can do this.
@John J. Smith: Wow. Your empathy for the deceased and their family is astounding.
Please don’t let it be yet another suicide!
@Colette Kearns: unfortunately Colette that’s probably what it was god help there family and the driver of the train
@Colette Kearns: would it be any better if the fatality was someone who didn’t have any intention or inclination to die?
@Colette Kearns: sadly it probably was…..
@Karen Wellington: No!
@Karen Wellington: well suicide and mental health is chronic in Ireland at the moment, tragic accidents while devastating can’t really be helped. So yes a suicide is more disturbing as it may have been preventable. But nonetheless there is a person who has lost their life and that’s the story here. God rest them.
@Karen Wellington: As someone who has had suicide in the family I would say yes, it is better when a person doesn’t intentionally kill themselves. At least when someone dies in accident we’re not left thinking about all the things we could have done to have prevented it.
@Bearded Grump: Just to add to clarify, I have also lost a family member in an accident, which is why I feel I can make that comparison.
Very sad for all involved. The drivers have to live with this forever. It must be the only job in Ireland where you’re almost certain to kill someone in your career.
How much time off do the drivers get under these circumstances?
In China when the public transport system goes on strike they continue to work but refuse to collect fares. Sounds reasonable to me.
What’s the Chinese approach to strikes got to do with someone losing their life after being hit by a train?
@Charles McCarthy: Did you comment on the wrong article? I’d like to Ask you the same question as the one above me. What has a train strike in China got to do with what happened today?
RIP
@nelly well then f%$k o%f over and get a job over there so and if someone is hit and fatally killed by a train at least you will only be inconvenienced for 60mins you inconsiderate knob
@Paul Reid: “Fatally Killed”…Are there other ways to be killed apart from “fatally “…??
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