There is no plan. Not really. No timeline. No price tag. Just a 100-acre scar on the earth at Campsie in County Londondarry waiting to fester.
Since 2013 we’ve known about the Mobuoy dump. It’s one of the largest illegal landfill sites in Europe. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish buried there. In June 2017, two businessmen got jail time for their part in it. They did the work. We’re stuck with the cleanup.
Last year Environment Minister Andrew Muir sat down with local politicians. He wanted to show them what was coming next for remediation. Mark H Durkan, SDLP MLA and former environment minister, came out the other side feeling pretty hollow.
“Obviously cost is where the focus is,” Durkan told BBC Radio Foyle. Then he laid out the void. “We have no estimated cost, no estimated_timeline and there is no guarantee that this work going to be done.”
Back in the Department of Agriculture’s 2022/2023 accounts—published early this year—the range was dizzying. £17 million at the low end. Up to £700 million if you wanted to dig up every ton of waste and ship it away.
We’re not planning to move it all. That figure was never realistic anyway.
So they settled on £107 million. A “point in time” estimate. Pollution prevention measures, containment, stabilization. The catch? Every month that passes makes that number climb. Delay costs money. Usually in double digits.
Durkan wasn’t throwing stones at Muir. “I do think they have been pretty reactive,” he said, though the word choice here feels softer than the situation warrants. Proactive. Let’s roll with it. Muir seems keen to get this moving. That’s the only good news.
The scale is what hurts. Investigations found roughly 1.6 million tonnes of waste. Nearly two-thirds of that—627,00 tonnes—was dumped illegally. Some of the trash goes back to the 1960s. Rotting for six decades.
The polluted ground covers 65 or 70 football pitches. Imagine filling an stadium with industrial refuse. That’s Mobuoy.
The longer we wait the more expensive it gets. More than money. Durkan warns the risk is shifting. “The longer it’s left that risk is only going to one way. Up.” Northern Ireland Water monitors the site extensively. The Environment Agency watches closely too. Drinking water isn’t at risk. Yet. But certainty fades as time moves forward.
Ciara Ferguson Sinn Fein MLA agrees the cost estimate is the next hurdle. Not just a guess but “evidence-based” and robust. Without it there’s no funding bid. No paper trail.
“We hope to have that completed by the summer,” Ferguson said. Summer feels far away when you’re looking at half a million tonnes of illegal waste.
Muir called the meeting a “constructive engagement.” Public consultation finished now he’s moving toward adopting a final remediation strategy. Including an updated cost estimate.
Everything hinges on a number. We’re waiting for a price tag for a disaster. And the clock keeps ticking.
