Construction of new community park at former Naas landfill site to start in two years

The transformation of the former dump site at Kerdiffstown into a public park area is on target.

Joe Boland, a Kildare County Council Director of Services, told a Naas Municipal District Council meeting that a draft Compulsory Purchase Order document has been prepared. This will allow for the ownership of the 75 acre site to be transferred to Kildare County Council.

The CPO document will be published at the end of August or early September.

Mr. Boland also said that construction is due to start in mid-2019 and the work would take six years.

An Bord Pleanala, rather than Kildare County council, will adjudicate on if and how the project and CPO proceeds.

It is regarded as a huge civil engineering project and the estimated cost of the project is €30-40m.

The site will be remembered as the location of a number of internal fires in early 2011 at the site, which has been used as a dump for some years prior to that time.

The site was the subject of numerous smell complaints from residents living in the Kerdiffstown areas as well as parts of Naas, Sallins and Johnstown.

Since then however the site has been cleaned up as part of a major remediation project initiated by the environmental Protection Agency and which was later handed over to KCC more than two years ago.

A total of 3.1 million cubic metres of waste was dumped at the site.

As part of the clean up project some 200 holes have been drilled on the site to assess the potential for pollution and this risk has been described as “negligible”.

No polluting material was found at the site and although a substantial amount of leachate, which is created as rainfall passes through deposited materials, was found it has been safely removed.