This article is from page 14 of the 2008-10-07 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
GORT’S water supply is being al- lowed to fall into a state of disrepair according to a local politician, who described Galway County Council as being “awash with fools”.
The south Galway town was last week named by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as one of 23 areas which exceeded the safe limits for lead in drinking water.
The town has been waiting a major development in it’s drinking water system for more than a decade with €15 million allocated for this in the last County Development Plan.
“There really is no water system
in Gort. It’s a joke. We were allo- cated €15 million for the creation of a system but when the time came to roll that out, we were told to see how the farm nitrates issue panned out before action was taken.We are still waiting,” said Adrian Feeney, of the Gort Chamber of Commerce and Independent candidate in next year’s local election.
“Gort is not represented in the council and that is the main problem here. It is very easy for towns on the edge of the county just to be ignored because they don’t have someone in their corner. At the moment, from what I can see the council is awash with fools.
“The reality is that the pipes in Gort were put in place way back in 1927 and almost without exception have not been changed since then. It’s not really a surprise that there is lead in the water.”
According to Mr Feeney, the state of the town’s water is seriously ham- pering the future development of the area.
“We cannot develop our town be- cause we don’t have the water, either the quantity of the quality. If you run a bath in Gort the bath will turn out brown, if you fill a glass of water it will be yellow, that 1s no condi- tion to have in a modern first world country,’ he said.