This article is from page 2 of the 2013-04-09 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
CLARE’S rivers have been devastated by pollution over the last 15 years with nearly half of the county’s formally pristine waterways now polluted.
That is according to a survey released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week, which also calls for an investigation to be carried out to determine the exact cause of the rapid deterioration of the county’s waterways.
The survey has been criticised by the Clare branch of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) who say that the information is out of date and does not reflect the massive improvements made in water standards over the last five years.
According to the EPA survey, there were a total of 45 ‘high status’ or pristine river sites in Clare in 1998. This number declined to 32 in 2006, with a further decline to just 24 pristine sited in 2009. This represents a drop of more than 46 per cent in the number of high quality sites between 1998 and 2009.
Broadford, Lough Graney and Owengarney each currently boast three high status sites each with the rest of the pristine sites located throughout the East Clare water sys- tems and the rest of the county.
The Clare Chairman of the IFA, Andrew Dundas, yesterday described the EPA report as scaremongering and out of date.
“The EPA information does not take into account the massive amount of work that was done on farms building in recent years – especially in the years between 2006 and 2008 when 2.5 billion was spend on Irish farms,” he said.
“Farming is now a very highly regulated area and many of the changes suggested [by the EPA report] are already in place. We have had the introduction of the Nitrates Directive and farmers must now undertake a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before they undertake any drainage work can take place.
“This is scaremongering and the information is just not up to date. The report also identifies rural septic tanks as a main concern and we all know that that issue is being changed dramatically.
“Farmers see themselves as the caretakers of the environment and it is in our interest to ensure that pollution does not become an issue in our water systems.” The Clare People contacted the EPA in relation to this story but no comment was available at the time of going to print.