Archive for the 'Water Directive' Category
December 2nd, 2016 -- Posted in Active, Fish, Irish Water, Politics, River Basin Management, Threats, Water Directive |
The latest news is a disaster. Wicklow County Council has shown their lack of concern for the River Vartry and in a foolish moment, decided to grant Irish Water permission. This could be considered shrewd, as they were aware that we would take this to An Bord Pleanála and this way they do not incur the wrath of the Government by doing something against them.
What is surprising is the total lack of concern for the environment by Wicklow County Council, the Government, Irish Water, the EPA and the media. I see articles in the news all about the wonderful plans to spend €250,000,000 on water infrastructure but not a mention of how this might affect the Environment. Irish Fisheries did put in a strong observation in the planning stage but have become uncomfortably silent.
The decision from WCC has only one Condition on Irish Water (other than boilerplate ones, archaeology etc) and that is
“The applicant shall maintain minimum daily compensatory flows of at least 5 Million litres per day in the Vartry River, in accordance with the details submitted on the 3rd of November 2016”. This will enforce on the River 1/3 of the current flow of 15ML per day. As well there is no enforced specification of what this water is. The Treatment Works has a poisonous discharge that can not be dumped in the river, but there is nothing in this condition to say that the 5ML is clean water. The file does contain an unworkable solution for dealing with the discharge of pumping it back over the dam into the reserviour. This we objected to on the basis that it would pollute the top of the reserviour eventually causing the water going to Dublin to be compromised. This solution was never meant to be followed and eventually the discharge will be dumped directly into the River, after it is destroyed from lack of water. This is part of our Appeal to ABP.
Reducing the flow in the river to 1/3 its present state can only be seen in a picture from the top of the Vartry by the reserviour. This is how the whole River will look if this decision is not fought.
To put things into perspective, with a flow of 15ML per day in the end of November 2016 the river above the Weir in Ashford looks like this. This is spawning time and the fish have to pass through this narrow channel.
Imagine now this scene with 1/3 of this water and the fish growing tiny legs to walk up the river. Although I joke to get you to imagine, it is not a joke. This is the true reality behind what is being done by the Government, WCC and Irish Water under the watchful eye of the EPA, Irish Fisheries and other that have not seen the truth. This is an EU protected river and even so, it is being treated like this. We do not what to wait for the “woops, sorry”.
I call this, “Government By Intimidation”. Nothing seems to happen without intimidation. The Government intimidates the County Council “We need housing! Build more houses where they shouldn’t be!”, “Don’t oppose Irish Water!”. The only way forward for ourselves is to use the same tactics and Intimidate the Government by pressing the media and asking all of you to join in our campaign to reach An Bord Pleanála, in force, with many people behind us.
Can you please join our campaign and donate to our Crowd Funding project? We now have to pay a Barrister and several Hydrologist and Hydrogeologist to help us make sure we win at ABP. As well we need a “War Chest” for future fights in the High Court and perhaps the Supreme Court, if necessary.
Help us Fight Irish Water to Save the River Vartry
Thanks for your support and joining us in this fight.
November 9th, 2016 -- Posted in Active, Ecology, Fish, Irish Water, Politics, River Basin Management, Threats, Water Directive, Wildlife |
Irish Water have decided to go to a hardline approach and are pulling the TRUMP (no pun intended) card. “People before Fish” and saying “The storage at the Vartry has a limit and if additional water is provided in compensatory flows, it will have an impact on Irish Water’s ability to provide sustainable drinking water supply for the region.” The propose to give 1/3 of the current amount of water that is currently coming from the Roundwood Treatment Works. This is will amount to the death of the River Vartry.
If you are in any doubt about our claim, here are some pictures of the state of the river as it is now in early November. Try to imagine 1/3 of this amount of water over the Weir.
Here is the width of the river going towards Ashford. The stones should not be visible.
If you want to make your voice heard, you can support our Objection by writing to the Wicklow Planning Office, Wicklow County Council, Wicklow Town. Place at the top “In support of River Vartry Protection Society’s Submission on 16363”. Tell them directly what you think.
We have put in our response to Irish Water in the Wicklow County Council under file 16363. You can go to www.eplanning.ie/WicklowCC/SearchExact and type in the file number and then see the submissions under “view scanned files”. The important ones are F.I. Clarification Letter and F.I. Received Doc. which are the Clarification asked by the Wicklow County Council and IWs response. Our response will be up there soon. I have uploaded our response which you can read the full story, if you wish here. FIClarification
We can see that Irish Water have no concern for the Environment and have no intention of preserving the status-quo of the river. It is soon going to be time for a bigger and wider campaign if we are to save the River Vartry from their grasp. We will be doing some “crowd sourcing” for funding in the event we are going to have greater need for experts and legal cost, but for the moment we are following the path and waiting for Wicklow County Council to make a decision by the end of the month on this planning.
September 2nd, 2016 -- Posted in Active, Ecology, Fish, Irish Water, Politics, Polution, River Basin Management, Water Directive |
Irish Water, the River Vartry Protection Society and the Vartry Conservation and Angling Club have been meeting to discuss what can be done for the benefit of everyone. Irish Water would like to solve the issues before answering their Further Information Request by the Wicklow County Council. From our standpoint, as Riparian Owners, there are two issue; Pollution, and Abstraction.
We have insisted on an EIA after the decision by our last meeting that this is mandatory requirement in our eyes. The issue however is really simpler. If we could be 100% assured that the quality of the water immediately down stream of the works was perfect at all times and could allow us to reach High status water quality, then an EIA would not really be necessary. Irish Water are working towards this and have be innovative in their approach but we will need some scientific proofs and ways to insure that this is working and continues to produce these results, over drought and all year, every year. Failsafe equipment and monitoring would be required to prevent any disasters but again Irish Water are willing to work with us and the IFI toward this.
The subject of Abstraction is ongoing and will need some more time. We do not have the data required to assess what the flow should be in the river in order to always have sufficient water over the beds and in time of the Spawn to have sufficient water that the fish feel comfortable and will be safe to spawn. We will be urgently working with the IFI to try and determine this but we will not have years to develop this data (as we should have had). We understand the urgency felt by Irish Water and will have to work towards an accelerated schedule but sufficient to assure good results. This negotiation is ongoing and will be need cooperation from both sides, but we are hopeful that there is a good understanding between. In the end the River Vartry will have the protection it needs to be a model salmonoid river and example of cooperation between the pressures on Water Resources.
July 18th, 2016 -- Posted in Active, Ecology, Fish, River Basin Management, Water Directive |
On Saturday the 16th in the Ashford Community and Heritage Centre we had a meeting with the new body LAWCO and the County Wicklow Partnership. LAWCO is an acronym for Local Area Water Communities Office, nothing to do with LAW. Ray Spain of LAWCO, This new group is a connection group between groups like ourselves and the EPA and the Department of Environment (which is having an Identity Crisis of it’s own as to what to call it!). It’s purpose is to get Local Knowledge “up the chain” so that water decisions are based on sound knowledge and real facts from the people who know it best. We have great hopes for this new entity and already they have show how important they are.
Alison Keogh of the County Wicklow Partnership explained various funding available for Environmental Groups and we have started thinking of applying for a grant through the Ashford Development Association Ltd. We may be able to find funding for the lingering project of replacing the Weir at Ashford with some attractive and fish friendly alternative. As well we would try to incorporate several other issues down at that point of the river, which is the spread of Japanese Knotweed (visible from the bridge) and the overgrowing of the river by the trees, blocking light essential for the fish.
We will keep you up to date on the progress of this Application.
July 9th, 2015 -- Posted in Active, Politics, Polution, River Basin Management, Water Directive |
The most important document for protection of the River Vartry is the EU regulated River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) which 4 years ago, we contributed to. We were pleased with the result as the River Vartry was going to be declared “Heavily Modified”, due to the Reservoir. Because of intervention of the Fisheries this was changed to the Upper and Lower Vartry. The Lower being natural and unmodified, while the Upper was heavily modified.
Without the help of the Fisheries, it would have been the death of the river. The plan had a requirement for defining Compensatory Flows for the river by 2015 but there were four responsible bodies, Wicklow County Council, EPA, Fisheries, and the Dublin Corp. At the time we realised that this was an important decision but would be hard to force to implement as there were four bodies responsible and it would likely fall between the chairs. Time proved us right.
It is not often that I get an opportunity to praise to the Government but Minister Alan Kelly for the Environment has done a superb job at preparing a Public Consultation Document to get public input prior to the Draft of the RBMP. To understand just how much he wishes to do a good job, I quote from the introduction, “There is general acceptance that the governance arrangements put in place to deliver the first cycle of river basin management plans did not work well. Arrangements were overly-complex and responsibilities were poorly defined with no single body having overall responsibility for developing the plans and overseeing delivery of the programmes of measures.” We have great hopes that this second cycle for the RBMP will be much more successful and address some of these weaknesses of the past.
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