Clare County Council has been ranked 18th out of all 31 local authorities for its efforts to tackle pollution last year.
However, the latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency shows this county has made significant strides over the past twelve months.
As part of the EPA’s Local Authority Environmental Enforcement Performance Report, it assessed every single county and city council on 20 separate National Enforcement Priorities (NEPS) across waste, water, air, noise and governance.
In 2022, Clare County Council scored the lowest possible ‘limited’ grade for its environmental noise directives.
The objective here is to reduce the burden of people chronically disturbed by transport noise, an issue which has been consistently highlighted in the Burren region.
This time round, the EPA found Clare County Council to have made improvements in efforts such as introducing traffic calming measures and monitoring residential noise quality and upgraded its 2023 enforcement status to ‘moderate’.
The local authority also only received a moderate grade for its water quality monitoring performance last year.
Though, Clare did receive a ‘strong’ grade in most categories, including for its efforts to reduce illegal dumping, construction waste and dealing with pressures from farmland such as slurry and fertiliser spreading.
Overall, 14 areas of Clare’s environmental enforcement were rated strong or excellent, which is up 27% on the previous year.
Clare County Council also dealt with 1,060 pollution complaints in 2023 and at the end of the year 26% of the county was considered litter and pollution free, 70% was slightly polluted, while 4% was considered moderately polluted.
