Council rejects councillor’s claims about old dump in Mohill

Claims by a local councillor that the old dump in Mohill is secreting “lethal substances” that are polluting Lough Rinn was flatly rejected by Leitrim County Council at the meeting of Carrick-on- Shannon Municipal District.
Cllr Des Guckian described it is “a scandalous cover-up of a very serious situation” adding that the lake is “badly polluted” and local farmers shouldn't be blamed when it was “pollution by the council itself.”
However, the Council rejected the claim and confirmed that there is no connection between the leachate (the wastewater from the decomposing waste) network and the river and therefore no discharge of leachate into the Rinn river.
The leachate is piped separately and ends up in Mohill wastewater treatment plant.
Mohill town councillor, Cllr Thomas Mulligan, described Cllr Guckian's comments as “over the top” and said there was no evidence of leakage from the site.
Cllr Guckian, in his notice of motion, said that he believed that excretions from Mohill dump are flowing into Lough Rinn and asked if “the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) licence was a license to pollute?”
He further asked how “seepages” from the old dump are handled and made safer and what the EPA licence covers.
“Is it allowing noxious and dangerous effluents to go downstream into Lough Rinn and onwards to Lough Forbes, which provides drinking water for Co Longford?” he queried.
Cllr Guckian said he wanted council officials along with EPA officials and Department of Environment officials to “tackle this whole issue of pollution by the council itself.”
He continued that “lethal substances have been placed in Mohill dump including asbestos, arsenic, hospital waste, etc.” and said that Lough Rinn is “by the EPA's admission, the most polluted lake in the midlands.”
Cllr Guckian said government funding should be sought to have a “really independent pollution survey done” and he told the council, “you act on the results.”
Cllr Mulligan said if he believed there was “leakage from the site in Mohill” he would be “the first to be complaining about it.”
He continued that after speaking with council officials in the environment section, there is “no indication that there is leakage from that site” and described Cllr Guckian's comments as “over the top” and that they were “causing concern to people living in Mohill and outside of the town, as to what's going on.”
Cllr Mulligan said, “When there is no evidence of this, I think it's something that any councillor or public representative should be more careful about the hairs they raise regarding a subject such as these.”
Cllr Sean McGowan supported Cllr Mulligan's sentiments.
Cllr Guckian responded that “there is no doubt of a direct hydrological link between the dump at Mohill and Lough Rinn and if you want evidence, the evidence is in Lough Rinn and the degree to which it is polluted and it's not right.”
He added: “I'm going to pursue this one and make sure it's seen to.”
A detailed report by the council said the waste mass at Mohill closed landfill is capped so surface water does not enter the waste volume but runs off the landfill into the surface water network and onto the river.
Under the landfill, capping layer and within the waste mass are drainage pipes that collect and transfer the leachate into the leachate network and into the leachate collection chamber manhole adjacent to the landfill and civic amenity site.
“From this collection chamber the leachate flows by gravity onto the Knocklongford pumping station and then pumped to the Mohill wastewater treatment plant.
A CCTV survey undertaken in March confirmed the leachate line is discharging by gravity to the public sewer and that it is piped completely separately to the surface water pipeline at this landfill.
The survey also confirmed that there is no connection between the leachate network and the river and therefore no discharge of leachate into the Rinn river.
“This EPA Waste Licence for Mohill landfill also requires that Leitrim County Council carry out an extensive suite of biological and physico- chemical monitoring and analysis on a monthly/ quarterly basis.
“The licence sets emission limit values for these parameters. All emissions from the landfill continue to be monitored in accordance with the EPA waste licence.
“It is a condition of the licence that all monitoring results are reported, and an annual environmental report (AER) is submitted each year.
“Since the closure of this landfill and based on the monitoring results and reducing levels of emissions from the landfill over the intervening years, the EPA did agree to reduce the monitoring frequency for both storm water and groundwater in the waste licence for Mohill landfill. They did so based on the reducing risk to the environment from this landfill.”