Anthology to raise funds for alliance

A BOOK of poetry entitled Anthology for a River, which is being published to raise funds for the River Shannon Protection Alliance, is being launched.
The book is edited by well-known poet Teri Murray and there are 38 contributing poets.
Gerry Siney is involved in the River Shannon Protection Alliance and he said the poets are drawn from far and wide. “Most of them are Limerick based but not exclusively so. There are poets based in Clare and in Dublin, Cork and Kerry, some from the UK and some from the US. They are all poems in praise of, or in defence of, the River Shannon. It’s a homage to the River Shannon. That is the main theme running through it.”
The River Shannon Protection Alliance was founded in opposition to plans to take water from the Shannon to serve Dublin.
Mr Siney said the plan is unnecessary and would be very detrimental to the river. “The two pillars of the River Shannon Protection are first and foremost that it’s not necessary, they don’t need to come to the Shannon. There are ample water supply options available to them very close to Dublin. The second pillar is that it will do enormous damage to the Shannon, not just environmentally and ecologically, but economically it will do immense damage because you have to bear in mind that the proposal includes extraction of water at a rate of hundreds of millions of litres of water per day. That has to impact on the Shannon. At the end of the day, the main stream of the Shannon is shallow enough and it won’t take long to do the damage,” he said.