This article is from page 12 of the 2012-02-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
CLARE County Council has questioned the criteria used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when assessing the quality of waste water treatment, describing it as “too blunt”.
While the local authority have not disputed the results of the EPA’s 2009 audit of treatment plants in the county, which was released last week, they have questioned the failure notice given to the Lahinch Waste Water Treatment Plant, which passed 11 of the 12 tests carried out by the EPA in 2009.
“While we have no dispute with the factual information on test results, we feel that the EPA’s cover-all definition of non-compliant is very blunt,” said a spokesperson from Clare County Council. “We are reviewing our records to find out the date and reason for the single failure [in Lahinch]. It may have been due, for instance, to weather conditions, or very high loading during holiday period, or a maintenance or equipment fault at the time the sample was taken.”
Meanwhile, construction work planned for a number of Clare waste water treatment plants has been stalled as a result of a lack of central government funding. Projects planned for Kilrush and Kilkee, Clarecastle, Liscannor, Ballyvaughan, Quin, Shannon, Ennistymon and Ennis South are all at various levels of development but none of the projects currently been granted the financial backing needed to go forward.
According to the latest information from Clare County Council, the Kilrush and Kilkee project is still on the Government’s 2010-2012 Water Services Investment Programme (WSIP) and is currently waiting for financing before works can begin.
Works at Clarecastle which would intercept the local effluent and pump it to the proposed upgrade of Clareabbey treatment plant are now unlikely to begin until 2015 or 2016 at the earliest.
Construction work on both the Lis- cannor and Ballyvaughan waste water treatment plants were part of the government WSIP for 2006 to 2009 but have been dropped from 2010 to 2012 list of projects.
Clare County Council are also planning an upgrade of the Quin treatment plant using funding received in total from levies and that work is ready to proceed, subject to finances being available.
The Shannon sewerage scheme, which includes a new treatment plant, has been retained on the WSIP for 2010 to 2012, however Clare County Council may be forced to pay unusually high percentage of the cost of this because of the large number of industries and business in Shannon.
The construction of a new treatment plant for Ennistymon was included as part of the government’s WSIP for 2006 to 2009 but has been dropped from the latest list of likely projects while in the Ennis South area, construction of an upgrade of Clareabbey is now thought unlikely to start before 2015 while.