November 14th, 2019
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revealed that that untreated
sewage of 77,000 people in 36 towns and villages is being discharged to the
environment every day.
In its Urban Wastewater
Treatment Report for 2018,
the watchdog warns that untreated raw sewage will continue to be discharged
into coastal and inland waters and contaminate the environment for the
foreseeable future.
According to the findings,
half of the wastewater is being discharged from Arklow, Co Wicklow, Kilmore
Quay, Co Wexford and Cobh, Co Cork.
Criticising Irish Water’s backslide on promising to connect 31 polluted areas to treatment facilities and reducing the number to 23, the EPA warned that “extending the time to eliminate discharge” is significantly jeopardising public health and the environment.
“It is
important to provide the outstanding infrastructure to end discharge of
untreated wastewater without any further delays, “the report states.
Andy Fanning, the
EPA’s head of Environmental Enforcement Programme said that Irish Water’s
failure in providing “adequate treatment infrastructure” was
unacceptable. “This is a legacy issue which must be solved by investment
in new treatment systems,” he said.
Albeit
acknowledging slow improvements, Mr Fanning said that he was dismayed that towns
and villages that already have the necessary treatment in place “did not
perform as well as they should.”
“We require
Irish Water to continue to improve how it operates and maintains wastewater treatment
systems to get the best performance from them,” he added.
The report has
also highlighted the dangers of raw sewage contamination of Ireland’s bathing
waters, with the potential to cause infectious skin, nose, ear, eye and throat
ailments.
Earlier this
year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) found that Ireland has failed to uphold EU law in
relation to almost 30 wastewater treatment schemes across the country.
The court’s ruling opens the door for Ireland to be hit with heavy fines for breaching EU regulations on sewage treatment if it does not act to rectify the situation.
The EU Commission
brought the case over Ireland’s failure to treat and collecting sewage without
posing any risk to human health and the environment in over 52 Irish wastewater
treatment schemes.
According to the judgment, incidences of sewage spill were counted 853 times in the Cork City scheme in 2015, leading to the leakage of around six million cubic metres of untreated sewage into the environment.
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