Sewer Would You Get It?

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A discharge from the Ringsend wastewater treatment plant into Dublin Bay in February; the Environmental Protection Agency’s Urban Waste Water Treatment in 2018 report

A report by the Environmental Protection Agency into water water treatment in Ireland last year has found that raw sewage from the equivalent of 77,000 people in 36 towns and villages across Ireland is released into the environment every day.

It’s also found that Irish Water is “taking too long” to finish the “improvements necessary to protect the environment”.

It adds: “Delays mean 13 areas will continue releasing raw sewage after 2021.”

In relation to the Ringsend Waste Water Treatment Plant, the report notes:

Ringsend waste water treatment plant opened in 2003 with a capacity to cater for a population of 1.64 million.

It now serves an average population equivalent to 1.9 million, which can increase up to 2.3 million during busy periods.

The plant fails to meet EPA and European Union treatment standards because it is overloaded and is not large enough to consistently treat the waste water it receives to the required standards.

Waste water released from the overloaded plant into the Lower Liffey Estuary will continue to breach the treatment standards until the plant is upgraded to provide additional treatment capacity.

…The quality of the treated waste water will improve as the upgrade works proceed but is not expected to start meeting the required standards until the end of 2022 at the earliest.

The report can be read in full here

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15 thoughts on “Sewer Would You Get It?

  1. Jake38

    I wonder how things would be if Irish Water had a reliable source of funding or could borrow to address these huge problems…………..

    1. Cian

      Don’t be silly. What kind of country would we be if we didn’t provide
      (a) some households with piped water/public sewerage services out of money from general taxation, but
      (b) forced other households to provide their own wells & septic tanks.

      We would be a laughing stock!

      1. italia'90

        It makes you wonder how the Victorians ever managed to build it all in the first place?

        They had much less and far fewer taxes back then too

        Hmmm perhaps our taxes have been squandered year on year by dumb and dumber FFG?

        1. Cian

          Wow…

          Your solution is that we colonise a quarter of the planet and use the riches stolen from the native people to pay for our water infrastructure?

  2. Increasing Displacement

    Might take some smugness out of the Malahide folk knowing they’re swimming in their own, and others, poop.

    Doubt it though….too much smug

  3. SB

    I notice they didn’t use the first picture as their cover photo.

    With the antiquated infrastructure we have, this is just going to get worse and worse, permanent boil notices countrywide will become standard. If only there was some ring-fenced way of ensuring people pay for what they use in order to fund upgrading the system. Some kind of bill for every household relating to water, say. Radical, I know, but it might just work. General taxation obviously isn’t.

    1. Janet, I ate my avatar

      that’s because the money raised by general taxation is squandered or paid out to pals/ contractors

  4. A Person

    Ah stop, it is all coming out of general taxation. Those who don’t pay tax, get this s###t for free. Let someone else pay for it.

  5. Truth in the News

    To update the EPA map in respect of one example Tubbercurry Co Sligo
    The facility is being upgraded and features the construction of an outflow
    pipe for a distance of nearly 4 km to a discharge into the River Moy at
    Annagh Bridge to avail of the dilution factor, it begs the question if upgrade
    was adequate should it not have been possible to facilitate the discharge
    into the local Maiden River adjacent to the Plant.

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