Published: Thursday, 10th September, 2009 9:00am

Council forced to intervene and move illegal waste

by Editorial Department

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The 40ft trailer containing illegal waste, which was abandoned at Rosslea and recovered by Fermanagh District Council.

Questions are being asked as to why Fermanagh District Council were left to remove a trailer full of illegal waste at Rosslea despite its removal being the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).

The 40 ft trailer, which was reported stolen from the Smithbrough area of Co. Monaghan, is overloaded with paper waste from the South and was left to fester on a laneway in a scenic area close to the River Finn for up to 10 days.

Among the contents discovered inside the trailer were archives of Irish Examiner newspapers and RTE production storyboards dating back to 2003.

Days of heavy rain meant some of the contents of the open-topped trailer were getting saturated and some of it was spilling onto the ground.

In a statement last week, the agency said it was aware of the trailer and "has staff in the area at present" and that "further action will be determined once the full situation is clear".

But 10 days on and still no "further action" had been taken until Fermanagh District Council intervened on Tuesday after requests were made from Councillors to have it removed at Monday night's monthly Council meeting.

Sinn Fein Councillor Brian McCaffrey, who requested its removal, said something had to be done.

"The trailer has been sitting there now for 10 days and is situated only 30 metres away from the River Finn, which is an environmentally sensitive river. Also the trailer was blocking a farmer from attending his farmyard further down the laneway. From what I can see there was no sign of NIEA ever coming to take it away and it's an indication of how far removed and out of touch this organisation is with life in the Fermanagh countryside and border area."

The curtain sider trailer was transported to the Council's main amenity site at Drummee where senior investigators from NIEA travelled from Belfast yesterday morning (Wednesday) to examine its contents.

DUP Paul Robinson said Fermanagh District Council should not have had to do NIEA's job. "This was an NIEA problem, we should not have had to remove it, but it could have no longer sat there. Residents were saying to me that there was a bad smell coming from it and we still don't know the full contents of what is inside this trailer. The agency in my opinion didn't want to know."

In a statement released yesterday NIEA responded and said, "officials inspected the trailer at the site of abandonment on 1 September 2009, and were able to establish that there was no immediate environmental or human health risk associated with it. There was no odour or evidence of dripping liquid from the trailer, which would be reliable indicators of the presence of degradable waste. Given the security situation in this area, NIEA did not further examine the trailer and, in conjunction with PSNI, were awaiting further information regarding ownership of the trailer and other details relevant to an investigation. On 8 September, Fermanagh District Council moved the trailer to their own landfill site, using legislative powers not available to the Agency, having alerted NIEA to their intention. NIEA will inspect the trailer today (Wednesday) and determine the appropriate regulatory regime and investigative strategy that will be used to deal with this situation appropriately."