§ Mr. BeggsTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the domestic waste dump sites in Northern Ireland where environmental problems have arisen, indicating the type of problem which has arisen at each site.
§ Mr. MossAt present, 28 landfill sites are authorised to receive domestic waste. Twenty-six are operated under district council control and two are operated by the private sector, but regulated by statutory authorities. Prior to 1980, landfill sites were used without proper design and building plans. Since then, authorised sites are engineered to deal with and contain leachate and gas emissions. Environmental problems associated with landfill sites can be litter, smell and bird invasion.
The degree to which any of these problems may be found at a particular site will depend upon a range of factors such as location, the engineering technology used in design and operation of the site and on-going site management.