Planned works to upgrade wastewater infrastructure have been delayed in five Clare towns and villages where raw sewage is released into the environment each day.
A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency has highlighted locations where Irish Water needs to prioritise wastewater treatment to protect public health and the environment.
The EPA is critical of Irish Water in this report – saying that the utility’s water treatment in towns and villages last year failed to meet the necessary standards to prevent pollution.
Ballyvaughan, Liscannor, Clarecastle, Kilkee and Kilrush have all been identified once more as areas where waste water is collected in sewers, and then discharged into rivers or other bodies of water without treatment.
But for each of these areas, the report also confirms a twelve month delay for works to be put in place.
Some of this is to be expected, with building works slowing as a result of the pandemic, but the EPA report now says it will be 2022 before treatment solutions are in place in Ballyvaughan, Clarecastle, Kilrush and Liscannor.
It will now be 2023 before progress is made in Kilkee.
The five Clare towns and villages are among 35 nationwide where the EPA say critical wastewater infrastructure is now needed.
Solutions will be delivered in just one of those in 2021.
The report has also identified Ennis South, Shannon Town and Lahinch as large urban areas that failed to meet the EU’s treatment standards last year.
In response, Irish Water admit that work has been ‘slower than anticipated’ in some areas, but that ‘real and tangible’ progress continues to be made.
