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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
64December 2014
great teeth (and the tongue’s nothing to do with uoride)
ENVIRONMENT BOGS
Golden plover over industrial cutaway bog,
County Westmeath
I
WOULD like to draw your attention
to the outright carnage bestowed on
hundreds of acres of our historical
raised bog lands in County Westmeath”.
So began an anonymous letter to a variety
of environmental NGOs and Government
officials in February of . Site visits
to Westmeath confirmed the concern and
revealed that in fact the extraction was
intensifying, with multiple unmarked
container lorries heading from the back
bogs of Coole and Castlepollard directly
to the docks in Dublin.
Five years later, a questionnaire to
local authorities from the Department
of the Environment about extrac-
tion sites of over hectares across
local authorities confirmed that the
industrial extraction from Ireland’s bogs
remains the biggest unregulated land use
in Ireland, if not in Europe. The ques-
tionnaire was based on a satellite survey
undertaken by an Irish environmental
NGO.
Environmental devastation
The statistics are in fact well known.
The original pristine raised bog area of
, hectares has been reduced to
, hectares. As of the last report
to the EU, % of the actively growing
raised bog in Ireland has gone, with one
third of the remaining % lost in the last
years.
The damage is also well researched.
Drainage of peat causes not only the
degradation of the peat, but a reduction
of water-storage capacity and a release of
nutrients, heavy metals, sediments, and
dissolved organic carbon.
The dissolved organic carbons when
treated with chlorine in our water-
treatment plants create carcinogenic
disinfectant by-products – trihalom-
ethanes. Trihalomethanes exceeding
the WHO and EU recommended levels in
drinking water currently affect ,
Irish consumers, some , of whom
are on the EPA’s ‘Remedial Action List’.
The fact that consumers are not informed
and so able to take precautionary
Of satellites
and devastated
Bronze Age roads
By Tony Lowes
The industrial
extraction
from Ireland’s
bogs remains
the biggest
unregulated
land use in
Ireland, if not
in Europe
“
Site overview: Coole, County Westmeath
An NGO operative measures silt
buildup leading to the Inny River in
County Westmeath
December-January 2014 65
66December-January 2014
ENVIRONMENT BOGS
measures, as required by the legislation,
is a not-unrelated scandal.
Then there is the loss of carbon sink
from turf-cutting and related activi-
ties (e.g. combustion and horticulture).
According to recent UCD studies, these
emissions are twice that from waste
processing and the equivalent of half of
the emissions from our national hous-
ing stock.
As a Southern Regional Fisheries Board
Report in concluded: “The com-
panies involved in the hacking of the
boglands have no appreciation for the
habitat or the surrounding watercourses
and do not work to any specified environ-
mental work procedures. The extraction
schemes are financially lucrative due to
consumer demand in Ireland, the UK
and further afield. The overall result is
that the loss of available bog sites greatly
exceeds the area of bog being conserved,
and this further demonstrates the urgent
requirement for control”.
Satellite Survey
The Department of the Environment’s
‘ Peatlands Survey’ was based on a
satellite survey of exposed peat-
lands commission from University
College Cork by Friends of the Irish
Environment [FIE].
The survey was pieced together from
free Landsat imagery and cloud-cover
meant that the only clear pictures were
from -. These revealed more
than , hectares of exposed peat-
lands in unknown ownership (excluding
Bord na Mona). Vast areas of devastation
stretched across the raised bogs of the
midlands with more than , hec-
tares in Offaly alone.
The results were catalogued by county
and size and presented by FIE to the EU
Petitions Committee with dramatic
results. The Commission wrote to Ireland
suggesting that “extraction is of a scale
that exceeds the threshold for mandatory
EIA without the competent authorities
having required any peat extraction
operator to undertake an EIA”.
Subsequent pressure from the
Commission led to the Department of
the Environment agreeing to investigate
sites of over hectares identified
in the NGO satellite survey. Accordingly,
they wrote to the local authorities
involved, providing maps and coordi-
nates, requesting site surveys of each
location.
While some sites were abandoned or
in fact were young forestry on exposed
peat soils, more than of the sites
were found to have required planning
permission. No local authority had to
date even a record of peat extraction, as
it was considered exempt from planning.
Consequently, none were on the Register
of Extractive Industries and not one had
undergone any assessment.
The Planning System
FIE also pu rsued t he u na uthor ised e xtr ac-
tion at a national level. A series of test
cases in County Westmeath was subject
to Section Reference, where the local
authority is required to determine if an
activity requires planning permission.
In its first decision the Planning
Appeals Board (An Bord Pleanála) dis-
missed the reference as it claimed it could
not identify the location or boundaries.
FIE took a judicial review, having sup-
plied GIS coordinates in the centre of a
-hectare site. The Board’s decision
was quashed by the High Court in
and costs were awarded against the
Board and Westmeath County Council
with a requirement for new References
to be submitted.
The new References led, after a fur-
ther two years, to a ruling confirming
that planning permission was required.
The Bord Pleanála Inspector concluded
drily: “The continued extraction of peat
and other ancillary works on each of
the sites raised in the referred request
would therefore be likely to have sig-
nificant effects on the environment and
require environmental impact assess-
ment. Indeed, after inspection of the sites
I cannot imagine any reasonable basis to
conclude otherwise”.
This decision was appealed to the High
Court by the two operators concerned –
Westlands and Bullrush who were also
given leave to continue operations whilst
the matter was being adjudicated (see box
above) on the grounds of unfair commer-
cial disadva