Trashing the environment

Just five miles from Derry’s city centre, on the suburban edge of the Waterside, is the site of one of the worst environmental crimes in UK history. It has been described as Europe’s largest illegal waste dump, which may be an exaggeration, but it is certainly one of the very biggest. The Mobuoy waste dump runs across both sides of Derry’s Mobuoy Road. It covers 116 acres and contains one million tonnes of illegally buried rubbish. While the company running …

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Environmental Governance Failure in Northern Ireland: High Time to Turn Over a New Leaf

By Ciara Brennan, Ray Purdy and Peter Hjerp Recent scandals including the RHI debacle and the discovery of illegal dumping on a massive scale (most notably at the Mobuoy Road ‘super-dump’) have catapulted Northern Ireland’s environmental governance failures into the public eye. The divergence from what can be considered ‘good’ environmental governance is clear and the environmental, economic and socio-political consequences of these failures cannot be overestimated. Protecting the environment is not a one-way cost and there has been very little …

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Terror in Tyrone – White Elephant Alert.

Recently there have reports of a large white elephant surveying the landscape across a large swathe of the centre of Tyrone, it is believed the creature has strong intentions of making its presence a permanent feature of this region. It is accepted that some of the local residents would openly welcome such a prestigious neighbour and others, who have escaped any direct contact to date, seemed little concerned by its presence. However an increasing number have been dismayed by the …

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