HAVING been battered by the terrible-twins, Storms Christine and Brigid, and with an estimated repair bill touching €30 million, Clare is now in grave danger of being swamped by further floodwater.
Recent rainfall, coupled with the forecast of torrential rains at the weekend, has Clare County Council on red alert, with the risk of flooding in Ennis.
The local authority, in conjunction with the emergency services, is putting contingency arrangements in place, both in terms of additional pumping capacity and other flood alleviation measures, at flood-prone locations along the River Shannon and River Fergus.
Council engineers are continuing to monitor water levels on the River Fergus and Lower River Shannon and say the risk of flooding will increase as a result of further rainfall up to and including the weekend.
County engineer Tom Tiernan has warned of the possibility of flooding in Ennis in the coming days.
“There’s a risk; there’s no doubt about it. Things aren’t too bad at the moment. We’re keeping things reasonably well under control. Some flood relief schemes have been finished, one or two are under construction and one or two have yet to be provided. Areas where works are in progress need that bit of extra attention and they’re getting it and areas that have yet to be defended are the more vulnerable ones but, generally, things are reasonably under control.”
However, he did caution, “If rainfall continues at the rate it has been coming down in recent times, it’ll be very, very difficult to prevent a situation where there will be a very serious impact somewhere”.
Ennis town manager, Ger Dollard, told The Clare Champion that river levels in Ennis are in the “red zone”, with a high risk of flooding still in place.
“We will continue to manage this and manage it as best we can but the danger has not passed,” he warned.
More serious flooding problems may also emerge in South-East Clare if the swollen waters of the Shannon breach defences.
“The River Shannon is building as well and, down in South-East Clare, we’re at a point where some roads close to the Shannon are, to all intents and purposes, impassable. Again, if the level of water in the Shannon continues to build and if the ESB are forced to let off water at Parteen Weir and if that has to increase, there’s potentially a serious threat there as well.”
Clare County Council is continuing to assess the scale of the damage caused by Storm Brigid to local authority-managed public infrastructure over the weekend. It says it is focusing on the clean-up of storm-affected areas and to undertake remedial works to local public infrastructure damaged in recent weeks.
The council says it will also be revising upwards the original €23.7 million cost of repairing damaged infrastructure, which was contained in its report to the Government last month. A revised report will be issued to Government later this week.
However, Mr Tiernan maintained that the damage cause by Storm Brigid shouldn’t prove as costly as that which resulted from Storm Christine.
“At the moment, we’re trying to assess the situation as it has evolved following last weekend, when there was quite a bit of damage done last Saturday morning right around the coast, in most of the same areas that the damage occurred during the storms of early January.
“In some cases, from the point of view of cost, you wouldn’t be talking about anything other than additional clean-up costs because the damage was previously done and hadn’t been fixed up, other than in a temporary manner. In other areas, the damage from the previous time was exacerbated and there’s much more of it this time,” he said.
Having escaped the brunt of Storm Christine, Kilkee was not so lucky this time round. “Walls have been breached in a few places. All of the paving that’s around the bandstand area and the amenity space between the strand line and the beach, anywhere you had hard landscape like paving bricks and slabs, all of that was ripped up. In a lot of cases, the walls supporting it were taken out,” Mr Tiernan explained.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.