November 29 2015

Herein under are outlined the reasons in summary why the plundering of the River Shannon constitutes such a massive mistake.

The reasons why Dublin’s proposed plundering of the Shannon should be strongly opposed are as follows:

 

Ø The entire plan remains in absolute contravention of the EU Water Framework Directive because of a total lack of public consultation and because of the project promoter’s failure to address the many adverse effects of the proposed abstraction. This is despite the fact that the consultants to the project identified some 62 adverse effects. In eight years, neither Dublin City Council, RPS consultants or Irish Water have called a meeting to which the general public has been invited to make submissions. This level of consultation is an absolute requirement of the EU Water Framework Directive.

 

Ø In the publication “Water Matters”, published by the Department of the Environment in 2007, all of the stakeholder counties on the River Shannon are designated and identified. None of the four Dublin Local Authorities were included, and neither was Wicklow or Kildare. Furthermore, in all publications on the Shannon River Basin District, the stakeholder counties are clearly identified and these do not include the Dublin Local Authorities.

 

Ø The Shannon River Basin District includes a portion of County Fermanagh in the North of Ireland which drains underground to the Shannon Pot, and the Rivers Shannon and Erne are also linked by the Shannon-Erne Canal. Any major diversion of the River Shannon’s waters will inevitably have consequences for water systems in County Fermanagh and in the Erne River Basin. Despite this obvious link, Dublin City Council and The Irish Water Board have continuously and arrogantly denied any requirement to discuss their plans with the appropriate authorities in the North – an attitude which conflicts with the policy and practice of developing and maintaining cross-border relationships.

 

Ø Large scale water abstraction increases the incidence of blue-green algal blooms, a known carcinogen, which has been conveniently ignored by Irish Water and its consultants. In the summer of 2009, an algal bloom killed 10,000 birds in Washington and Oregon. Do we need to increase the risk of cancer incidence in the Midlands, South and Southwest to accommodate Dublin City Council’s greed?

 

Ø Our environmental scientist, Jack O’Sullivan, and our hydrologist, Dr. Paul Johnson have both concluded in a major study, which has been updated three times, that the project is totally unsustainable.

 

Ø Any significant fall in water levels throughout the Shannon catchment area will bring about the swift, total, and irreversible decline of tourism, leisure activities, angling, agriculture, hotel and accommodation interests, and the Shannon’s fragile ecology will be damaged to such an extent that it will never recover, even if the water abstraction were to be discontinued!

 

Ø Small feeder streams, and shallow reed beds which are the spawning grounds for nearly all fish life, will be dry in a matter of months.

 

Ø There is no fall-back strategy in existence, should our worst fears be realized, as they inevitably will. The Irish Water Board and Dublin City Council, as the lead authorities promoting the water abstraction scheme, have refused to concede a shutdown of the pipeline if the damage to the River Shannon becomes apparent. (How can you cut off the water supply to one million people?).

 

Ø Both Dublin City Council and An Bord Uisce have failed to address the daily loss of more than 300 million litres of water from its own water supply and distribution network, an amount which is almost equivalent to what it intends to plunder from the Shannon for Dublin’s own use.

 

Ø If this ludicrous plan were to proceed, it would signal the end of all development in the towns and villages located on the Shannon; e.g., Carrick-on-Shannon, Rooskey, Lanesboro, Dromod, Glasson, Athlone, Limerick, etc.; and would further compromise water supplies into the future for all of these villages, towns and cities.

 

Ø Irish Water has decided on the Lower Lough Derg (Parteen Basin) option on the grounds of costs and minimal damage to the environment but has not factored in the cost of the destruction that will be suffered by the one million people resident in the Shannon Catchment Area.

 

Ø In Lough Derg, there is the added risk of destroying the value and interest of its Special Area of Conservation, its Natural Heritage Areas and its Special Protection Areas, designated at national and European levels.

 

Ø On-going climate change, which is predicted to greatly affect the security of water supplies into the future, will not be confined to the east coast; and the agencies which control water supplies will become all-powerful, a reality of which Bord Uisce and Dublin City Council are very well aware!

 

Ø Our consultants are quite correct in stating that the Irish Water Board has gratuitously ignored the exploration of all other options for providing water into the future and went for the soft option jugular of commandeering the Shannon for its own private use and that of its client, Dublin City Council.

 

Ø Domestic water-metering will eventually become a reality; and, if we are not careful, we will find ourselves paying Irish Water or the privatized water company or their agents for water which doesn’t belong to them.

 

Ø Cork gets 90% of its water supply from groundwater, and in Dublin North and Fingal there is a high yielding aquifer stretching over four counties; but Irish Water and Dublin City Council have completely ignored this source in its Strategic Environmental Assessment.

 

Ø Based on British and European water pricing statistics, the commercial value of the amount of water that An Bord Uisce intends to abstract from the Shannon is calculated at €255 million every year. If we discovered gold, platinum, diamonds or oil in the Shannon Basin, would we permit the Dublin City lobbyists/ bureaucrats to come and take it off our hands? What we have in the River Shannon is far more precious than these:

 

Ø The precious commodity of pure water is the scarcest and now the most valuable commodity on earth. At any event we in the Shannon Protection Alliance do not regard the River Shannon as a commodity for sale nor do we have any right to dispose of our future generations’ inheritance.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

 

Dublin City Council via its agent Irish Water, in its arrogance, has presumed itself to be more important than the rest of the country, and that its interests should take precedence over all other considerations. We in the Shannon Protection Alliance did not agree, nor do we stand in awe of Irish Water, Dublin City Council, that arsehole Alan Kelly or any other entity.

The Shannon and its tributaries have been the source of life to countless billions of life forms since the last ice-age. The onus is on us to preserve, protect and enhance our majestic river for ourselves and future generations. In this endeavour we need the leadership and commitment of our democratically elected politicians, such as we have in the Shannonside Counties at present.

The political landscape is forever changing. We are due a general election in the spring. Six months ago the odds against a Fianna Fail/ Fine Gael coalition stood at 8/1. Now the bookies have revised their odds to evens on the prospect of such an alliance. The bookies seldom get it wrong, the British General Election being a notable exception.

Labour in Ireland is fucked and finished and shag the much loss. Every other political party or alliance is committed publicly to scrapping Irish Water and the entire madcap plan will have to go back to the drawing board in its entirety.

Politicians are not to be trusted in Ireland and the urge for power nearly always overrules and overrides the common good. Now, more than ever, vigilance must be the byword.