THE US company behind the lease to build a gasification plant in Gortadroma has revealed plans to turn the former landfill site in Ballyhahill, County Limerick, into a tourist attraction when completed.
In an exclusive interview with the Limerick Post, Cadence EnviroPower (CEP) chief executive Leonardo Riera disclosed that some of their waste management facilities in Florida, including a newer gasification facility, have become tourist attractions.
“In Gortadroma, we plan to build a visitors’ centre, where the public can come to learn about the local environment and the gasification waste to energy process in general. Once in operation, we plan to help organise visits for schools and for others interested in seeing how waste is turned into clean energy,” Mr Riera said.
CEP’s chief operating officer Dr Bary Wilson claims that their Gortadroma facility was designed to be as “efficient, clean, and quiet as possible”. He insists that patent pending technology that further reduces emissions of all kinds have been added to the design of the County Limerick gasification plant.
“The incoming waste is processed inside a building to make a refuse derived fuel. This building is maintained at a negative pressure to the outside so that any dust or odours produced inside the buildings do not reach the outside. Instead, these are swept into the gasifiers and destroyed. There is no accumulation of unprocessed waste outside of the facility,” Dr Wilson told the Limerick Post.
CEP is commissioning an environmental baseline study by a leading independent Irish environmental consulting company to determine the present condition of the environment in and around the land they will be leasing for the gasification project.
“The results of this comprehensive study will be a yardstick against which to measure the environmental performance of the new facility. The CEP lease on the land requires that the property be returned to County Limerick in 30 years in the same or better condition than it is at the present time,” he concluded.
The full interview appears on page 30.
