An Bord Pleanála Will They Dare To Go Against Irish Water
With our Appeal going in on Monday to An Bord Pleanála, we have made the best effort possible to save the River Vartry on behalf of all of you who could see that this was the big battle.
Until our Appeal is accepted and we have the file number from An Bord Pleanála, we cannot publish our Appeal but we can give you a few snippets, should you be in any doubt of why we are fighting. In order to make a determination of Environmental Impacts, Wicklow County Council needed to apply “Best Science Available Principle” and for this they asked Jonathan Sexton Executive Scientist – Water and Environment who works for the Wicklow County Council.
Jonathan Sexton produced his first report on 06/11/2016 which was excepted by Tom Griffin, Senior Executive Chemist with minor changes. However unexplainably, a major revision appeared on the 11/11/2016. The major difference was that in the recommendations an important paragraph disappeared. It said “The Applicant shall maintain the current flow regime of leaking water until such time that flow measurements and modelling have been undertaken to establish a suitable environmental flow regime that takes standards into account. The current flow regime shall use flows of water from the Vartry Reservoir to match current leakage flows from the leakage channel from the filter beds and current leakage flows from the overflow weir from the Reservoir.”
We can only applaud Jonathan Sexton for his sound and well founded suggested condition on the planning. We of course, suggested this approach but he recognised that this was the approach to be taken. Unfortunately “someone” did not agree and put pressure on him to remove this because on the version of the 11/11/2016 it was removed. What was added was the statement of Jonathan Sexton “Considering the importance of the proposal in providing secure drinking water supply to a large region, I recommend…”. Clearly he was not fully in agreement with this decision and but complied to the pressure placed upon him. Below is the full text of his recommendation.
Had this been the only issue with this report, it might pass the scrutiny of An Bord Pleanála as without proof that undo influence was placed by Wicklow County Council on an Independent Science Report. However… If you look below you will see that in the public record is a Science Report that has been altered by an “Unknown Hand“ after being published by Jonathan Sexton. This is sloppy and an unacceptable action by a Planning Authority and we claim makes the whole process in doubt. Were it to happen to you or me on planning for our new house, someone would scream. We are screaming that the Planning Permission is Null and Voided by the hacked Science Report and Wicklow County Council cannot be trusted to perform an unbiased Planning Process on this file.
When you look whom has been crossed out by the “Unknown Hand“, it is Inland Fisheries Ireland and ourselves the Local Stakeholders. Is it not surprising that these are the parties that have strongly opposed what is happening and have questioned the wisdom of the Wicklow County Council going ahead without a proper Independent Environmental Impact Assessment. This illustrates their bias against anyone who opposes themselves and Irish Water. This is not a transparent or adequate process.
Read it for yourself and raise this issue as loud and vocal as you can. We need to prove to An Bord Pleanála that it is not just us, but all of the public that want this decision reversed and sent back for proper analysis. Only this will insure the survival of the River Vartry.
December 17 2016 11:26 pm | Active and Ecology and Fish and Irish Water and Politics and Polution and River Basin Management and Threats and Water Directive and Wildlife