Incineration (again)

Mind you there’s a lot to complain about the status quo

How ironic – John Gormley got Brian Lenihan to intervene against the incinerator (possibly as a trade for this tax thing) and now it looks like Gormleys career is the only thing going up in smoke – some would say it was rubbish anyway!

Eureka – but those people are commonly known as simpletons

But they lay out the alternatives. Mechanical-biological treatment is one. The other (unstated but obvious) one is an incinerator which doesn’t charge as much per tonne. Why not get one like the one in Elbert County, or the one in Wales?

@zhou_enlai
“How can Dublin City Council saddle the nation with this without any proper scrutiny or transparency?”

In much the same way as loads of dwellings, “development”, NAMA was foisted on us – a focus on grand gestures rather than quiet competence.

For example see this posting on “the data and evidence deficit in Ireland”
http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/the-data-and-evidence-deficit-in-ireland/

More of the same is clear for Transport21, including Metro North.

Whimsical governance is clear in the the current Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) proposal to “join-the-dots” of the two existing LUAS lines. There will be no through passenger services between the existing lines, just an “interchange opportunity”.

As part of the SMART economy word-smithing, RPA has come up with a new meaning for “network”!

“Luas City Centre (Line BX) will extend the Luas Green Line from St Stephen’s Green to O’Connell Street and provide an interchange opportunity with the Luas Red Line at Abbey Street, thereby providing an essential missing link, a link critical to the establishment of a Luas network.”

“This northbound single track line crosses O’Connell Bridge …. crosses the Luas Red Line tracks at Abbey Street where an engineering link (for occasional use by trams out of service) is provided between the two lines. The proposed O’Connell – GPO stop will be located on the median between Prince’s Street North and Abbey Street, allowing passenger interchange between the proposed line and the Luas Red Line.”
see http://www.rpa.ie/en/news/Pages/RPAAppliestoAnBordPlean%C3%A1laforLuasBroombridgeRailwayOrder.aspx

@Antoin
The structure of the argument is: “We could do A, but that would cost so and so much, or we could do B.”

You cannot meaningfully compare the price of a service in three different countries without considering the cost base.

We are not comparing the costs of a service. We are comparing the cost of a major capital project with financing and technical management attached. Covanta is bearing technical risk and financial risk, but all the commercial risk is in the hands of DCC.

@Richard Tol

While I agree with much of your comment, you should really learn to pay less attention to Irish Times drivel and to recognise this absurd newspaper for what it is. If you had lived in Ireland longer, you’d realise that this sort of whipped-up contoversy is what the Irish Times is all about, pandering as ever to Dublin 4 chatterers, who see the evil hand of Fianna Fail conspiracy in everything. The authors of this article are described as having campaigned against e-voting machines. I might have guessed. The e-voting project was a perfectly sensible initiative to modernise the counting of votes in Irish elections. Because of the complex electoral system, it can take many days, even weeks, to complete the count. Those working as counters, tellers etc, often have to take many days off work as a result. With e-voting, the count could be completed in minutes, and it was used very successfully in the 2002 election. That was why Bertie Ahearn tried to introduce it on a permanent basis. But, supported by the Irish Times, the Dublin 4 chatterers launched a campaign against e-voting, claiming ridiculously that Fianna Fail would use them to rig the election results, even though the e-voting machines were manufactured by a perfectly respectable company in your native Netherlands. The campaign succeeded, and then the nutters behind the campaign blamed the Fianna Fail government for the loss of money resulting from discarding the machines. It looks like something similar is happening here. A perfectly sensible initiative to handle waste is launced. The Dublin 4 chatterers rise up against it, supported by the Irish Times. And, of course, if they succeed, they’ll blame the Fianna Fail government for the loss of money, not their own spurious and absurd campaign.

@JtO:
You may not have read the reports (or even the press releases) issued by the Commission on Electronic Voting http://www.cev.ie. Its members — The Hon. Mr. Justice Matthew P. Smith, Chairman; Kieran Coughlan, Clerk of the Dáil; Deirdre Lane, Clerk of the Seanad; Danny O’Hare, Chairman of the Information Society Commission; Mr. Brian Sweeney, Chairman of Siemens — don’t seem to be the sort to be swayed by “nutters”. The Commission’s summary conclusion was:

“The Commission concludes that it can recommend the voting and counting equipment of the chosen system for use at elections in Ireland, subject to further work it has also recommended, but that it is unable to recommend the election management software for such use.”

The, er, “nutters” were right; FF hadn’t done its homework. Plus ca change ….

bjg

@hoganmahew

Nobody involved with Property Pin should call anyone a loon. Its the ultimate loon website.

I think you’ll find that opposition, both to the incinerator project, to the e-voting project, and to a host of other modernising projects, comes invariably from the same sources. The reality is that it is not possible to move ahead on any modernising project or any infrastructure project in Ireland, without the Irish Times-reading, Property Pin-posting, Dublin 4 chattering classes rising up against it. This doesn’t happen to anything like the same extent in any other country. Richard Tol, coming from the Netherlands, is obviously bewildered by the strength of opposition from this quarter to the incinerator project. I don’t know exactly how long Richard Tol has lived in Ireland but, if he’d had lived in Ireland longer, he’d know that this is par for the course. Virtually every piece of infrastructure that we now enjoy has only been able to be proceeded with after years of bogus controversy, stirred up by these groups, complete with all the essential elements of ‘the Irish environmental protest campaign’ (marches, petitions, weekly Frank McDonald articles in the Irish Times and so on). Just look at the recent record.

Every single motorway project south of the border, without exception, was delayed for years by spurious objections (snails, viking ruins, proximity to ancient battlefields, rare breeds of grasses, being among them). North of the border, motorways were being built without fuss as early as the 1960s. Since the defeat of the anti-motorway protestors, which finally allowed the development of a modern national motorway network to proceed, Ireland has experienced the largest fall in road deaths of any developed country. The Dublin Port Tunnel was delayed for a decade by phoney objections – it was even claimed at one time by the objectors that its development would lead to thousands of houses in Dublin collapsing into rubble. Having severely delayed but not prevented modern ring road networks in cities like Cork, Limerick and Waterford, the objectors are currently holding up the badly-needed ring road network in Galway. The same groups tried to stop the new Dublin airport terminal and the new Dublin convention centre. They wrecked plans to give Ireland a proper-sized stadium for soccer and rugby. They have tried to prevent every office block and shopping centre development in the past 30 years. They are objecting to virtually every ESB overhead cable and demanding, ludicrously, that ESB cables be laid underground, a proposal which, if implemented, would result in Ireland having the highest electricity prices by far in the developed world. They continually try to stop people building modern houses for themselves in the countryside, although, since rural Ireland doesn’t give a toss for them, their impact has been somewhat limited here. The incinerator contoversy is simply the latest in a long long line of bogus controversies, stirred up by the serial objectors. When Richard Tol has lived in Ireland longer, he’ll come to understand this. One of the reasons why Fianna Fail are so hated by this quarter is they are the only party which has ever stood up to the serial objectors to infrastructure development, although even they seem to have lost some of their enthusiasm for doing so since they became over-dependent on the Green Party for support.

@JtO

There was no audit trail with e-voting. There was no way for people to check manually that the software algorithms had been properly applied. No paper records were generated. There was no proper provision for storage of the machines. It had not been fully tested.

The project was treated as if it were the computerisation of an accounting taks rather than the computerisation of the primary democratic process whereby the sovereignty of the people is asserted. There were copious other errors following on from the initial misunderstanding of the policy. I cannot recall them all and I don’t want to rely on faulty recollection. A report was carried out which highlighted them. The implementation of policy was a total debacle. There is no two ways about it.

Minister Dempsey gave Minister Cullen one of the worst hospital passes in the history of the Irish politics. Whilst Minsiter Dempsey’s policy may have been correct, his inability to recognise valid criticism or to alter his position led to Fianna Fail being associated with incompetent governance. E-voting is not impossible. Mistakes or failures of implementation are nothing to be ashamed of. It is ignoring valid criticism that gets one in trouble.

@Richard Tol

I have not suggested there is illegality. I have suggested there is unjustifiable secrecy and consequently a lack of transparency and accountability. It is ironic that you are arguing for recourse to the law and I am arguing for recourse to economics and good governance!

@Richard Tol

The opposition have had a majority on Dublin City Council for a term and a half now. The Government is the only thing standing between Ringsend and this project. Phil Hogan, FG Environment Spokesman, has come out baldheaded in favour of the incinerator in its current guise. Lucinda Creighton seems to have no influence on her party’s policy on this issue.

Opponents of the incinerator are hardly likely to vote for the opposition in those circumstances!

@Donal:
“IMO, that lack of managerial and political plain speaking – by local and national politicians and public servants – and dealing with genuine concerns led to the strenght of the opposition.”

Same story with the Kildare Bypass, in the objections to which I had a small role. Nobody I knew had any objection to the Kildare Bypass per se; the problem was its possible effects on the Pollardstown Fen (main supply of water to the Grand Canal, which is where I came in. And the famous snail was merely a canary in a coal-mine.). The only reason that the Fen was affected was that the bypass was to be put in a cutting around Kildare, not on the surface, where you might expect a road to be built.

Kildare County Council justified this by saying “Where the route passes through the northern area of the National Stud and adjacent to the built up area of the town it is depressed in order to diminish the effects of severance, noise, air pollution and visual intrusion.” I felt that there were cheaper ways of safeguarding the town (not that there were many houses close by) and I asked the National Stud about its position.

I was told that the Stud had not proposed the cutting but that it had said it would be unhappy with a surface-level road because:

(a) traffic might disturb the horses. I felt that it might be cheaper to relocate the stables than to put the motorway in a cutting

(b) a vehicle might crash off the motorway and kill a (presumably blind, deaf and crippled) horse. No risk analysis had been conducted; nor had the effectiveness of motorway barriers been assessed

(c) horse-owners might not like their horses being seen from the motorway (but the Stud advertised to attract visitors, and folk don’t usually stop on a motorway for sightseeing).

The case was not in the least convincing. The project was delayed, and the builders ended up putting the motorway in a plastic bag, for exactly the reasons that you have identified. If we have many protests about new proposals, it is because we cannot trust what we are told.

bjg

I wonder if the anti-incinerator whingers (aka local property owners) had to pay for the abandonment of the contract directly out of their own pocket would they seek it’s abandonment so glibly?

@Ciaran Daly

– Do you have details of the costs which will be incurred if the contract is frustrated?
– Do you have details of the costs which will be incurred if Dublin City Council fails to fulfill the conditions necessary to get the project off the ground?
– Have you examined the termination and default provisions in the contract?
– Is there a cap on Dublin City Council’s liability if the project does not proceed?
– Do you have a reliable assessment of the best-case, worst-case and probable cost to Dublin City Council if the project does proceed?
– Have you capitalised such sum for comparison with the costs of abandoning the contract now?

I have been following the blogs for the last few days and note that people seem to think this discussion is about e- voting or roads – its neither. Its about incineration in Poolbeg – or at least that seems to be the heading at the top.

So:
If there is insufficient waste for the put-and-pay contract, which would appear to be the facts.
If we are not going to be hit by penalties for missing landfill targets (and anyway Poolbeg wouldn’t be on line for 3 more years anyway) as the Minister confirmed this morning
If government policy has changed – which it plainly has due to the legal implementation of the Waste Hierarchy.
If the private waste sector can meet the challenge which they claim they can – ref Lagan, Irish Cement, Greenstar and Panda et al
If we want to protect and develop our recycling industry.

Then – Logic proclaims; Do not proceed with a plan conceived and developed in 1997. Just cos it might have worked then does not give any good reason to proceed with it 13 years latter when a blind person can see that all has changed in this space.

Yes build something but for goodness sake make it is the right animal for the new market.

And finally Pat’s comment on the radio this morning about sizing for the future i.e. the M50 analogy – this doesn’t apply to an incinerator – You MUST fill it when you switch it on as otherwise you will have emissions issues. Therefore it will immediately impact recycling and other sectors.

Could we please stay on point folks….

@Richard
Thanks for posting about our article.

Given that DCC have spent over € 25 million on consultant’s fees for this project it is a bit rich of you to expect us to provide a fully developed alternative. Remember we are not remunerated for doing this research or for our time attending at the oral hearings and we had to pay for the FoI requests from our own pockets.

@zhou_enlai

The question of sewage sludge goes to the heart of DCC’s obfuscation regarding this project.

They had one sentence in the EIS regarding the burning of sludge – no detailed plans, no quantities, no analysis and no actual application for planning permission for it. The Inspector specifically excluded the burning of sludge from his draft conditions but the ABP Board removed his clause – we wonder why?

Then, since the application process for this large plant is split across many agencies, DCC’s application to the EPA for a licence DID include the burning of 80,000 tonnes of sludge.

Why would DCC make application to one agency and not the other while using the one EIS for the both applications? They never provided any analysis of the engineering, mass balance or energy balance impact of burning the sludge.

The effect of burning sludge on the electrical output of the incinerator is detrimental to the extent that the plant becomes a substantial contributor to global warming.

We believe that the necessity to find a solution to the sewage sludge from the Ringsend WWTW is the reason DCC placed the incinerator on the next door site in Poolbeg. The actual “centre of gravity” for waste arisings in the Dublin region is near Ballymount – just look at the route of the M50 near which all three waste baling stations are located.

In fact, via the M50, Killiney is just 22 km from Ballymount whereas Poolbeg is 30 km. The incinerator could have been sited on the coast in Killiney – they land might have been cheaper and it could have become an architectural monument to the management in DCC / RPS / Covanta.
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J&V

@RT

“Like it or not, contracts have been signed and must be honored or bought out.”
“But I think you should consider the full range of implications of your proposal.”

It is impossible to consider the full range of implications while the contract remains secret. I think the need to consider the full range of implications is at the heart of Joe & Valerie’s argument.

I was mulling over this again and I must say that I can see no justification for keeping the details of this contract secret now or in the past.

“Time and money already invested would be in vain.”
“None of this is to say that, once a train has been set in motion, it should keep running.”

I think this is a massive psychological hurdle for DCC.

Anyone would be revulsed at the idea of 10 years’ of their work and millions of euros which they authorised be spent being flushed down the drain. It would be a serious blow to their reputation, ego and credibility notwithstanding that the main reason would be that changing circumstances over-took them.

However, the right decision (taking account of all implications including the time needed [by the market or the City Council] to deliver an alternative) is always the right decision. Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court has written that the lawyer who fights a trial should usually not be engaged again in the appeal. He is too clouded and too compromised. The same applies to DCC here.

@Richard,
It seems there is a break clause in the contract (tonights Prime Time)

This makes void your main argument which was basically to say that the contract is signed and there is nothing we can do about it, that breaking the contract would be costly and bad for Irelands reputation.

Can we expect you to start based on this, or is it just ilinformed IT articles that warrant a re-opening of this debate on this blog?

Where do you stand now? What would you do if you were Dublin City Manager?

@sam

Which part of our IT article was ill-informed?

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J&V