Cork Landfill to Landscape Shortlisted for Best Park Award

Tramore Valley Park (formerly Kinsale Road Landfill) in Cork, Ireland has been shortlisted for the Best Public Park Award in the Community & Council Awards 2017. The awards ceremony will be held in Dublin this Saturday, 4th February.

Kinsale Road Landfill operated as a municipal landfill from the early 1960s until its closure in 2009, with over 3.5 million tonnes of waste landfilled on site. Cork City Council has dedicated significant resources to remediating the landfill using a variety of different engineering initiatives in compliance with EPA licence requirements. The 70 hectare site is now being transformed from a once unpopular landfill into a parkland amenity for the local community.

Amenities provided for the local community include Munster’s only international standard BMX track, 5 km of paths and trails, including biodiversity trails and bird hides, a multi-use events area and sports pitch, pavilion building with changing facilities and public toilets and parking for 200 vehicles.

RPS delivered the final phase of the engineering remediation work on behalf of Cork City Council in 2015, including detailed design of landfill capping, leachate and landfill gas infrastructure and surface water system design. The challenge was to successfully integrate this infrastructure whilst ensuring the site could be developed to meet the amenity objectives and create visually attractive spaces. The RPS project team also designed internal access roads, the pavilion building, parking, playing field and landscaped areas.

The design team applied the best principles of sustainability using recycled construction materials where possible. This included the innovative reuse of crushed concrete from demolished grain silos in the Cork City docklands to fill gabion cages and form park benches. Landfill gas has been used to generate electricity on-site and feed into the national grid to power 850 homes in the locality. Foundation bases and ducting for three wind turbines have been installed for future installation of turbines. Allowances were made for future landfill settlements, so the pavilion building was constructed on piled foundations and the car parking area was constructed using a flexible rubber ‘BodPave’ system.

The site is unique in Ireland in delivering such a range of tangible benefits to the local community on a previous landfill site. It will benefit a range of people from the locality and wider areas including fitness / BMX enthusiasts, nature-lovers and families seeking open green spaces.