Councillors call for water management assessment

Clare county councillors have called for an independent assessment of the water management of the River Shannon following the unprecedented flooding, which resulted in the evacuation of 22 homes in South-East Clare last November.

The request was made at a council meeting on Monday following a presentation by ESB management from the Ardnacrusha Power Generating Station about how it dealt with the floodwaters in the lower Shannon River during the crisis.
Tony Hayes from Ardnacrusha Station revealed the Office of Public Works would be conducting a draft study on the flooding in the River Shannon, which should provide the vehicle for finding a solution to this problem on the river.
Station manager, Senan Colleran provided a presentation for councillors including a number of statistics relating to the release of flood waters from the sluice gates at Parteen Weir following a motion requesting this information from Councillor Cathal Crowe last November.
Mr Colleran assured members that the ESB released as much of the floodwater as possible last November and stressed that the flooding in South-East Clare would have been much worse if the generating station had never been built.
He added that Springfield, Clonlara was one of the worst places to be hit by flooding because it was situated in a low-lying area.
“Lough Derg has a storage capacity of about 50 million tonnes, which is about 12 hours of a flow. Even if Lough Derg emptied, this would take about 10 or 12 hours to fill and would not affect the peak of the flood.
“The gradient of the River Shannon is quite shallow. There is only a 15 metre drop from Athlone to Lough Derg. One of the difficulties with Lough Derg is the river channels are not wide enough to take the volume of water when there is flooding.
“Parteen Weir, which is four kilometres south of Killaloe, plays a significant role in the control of water in Lough Derg. It splits the flow through the Head Race and down the original route of the Old River Shannon.
“The Mulcair River, which is one of the tributaries flowing into the river adds about 40% extra to distribute during flooding and the Mulcair River can’t release water quick enough causing water to flood in Springfield,” he said.
He said the water levels in Lough Derg and the River Shannon were extremely high last November following three times the average rainfall in one month. He said it was the worst flood recorded in their records apart from 1913, which wasn’t officially recorded.
He recalled the ESB worked in co-operation with Clare County Council and other agencies by issuing floodwaters in the media during the flooding last November.
Councillor Cathal Crowe read a letter from residents in Springfield that questioned whether the ESB followed best practice and expressed concern that the electricity board was allowed to monitor the levels of Lough Derg without any apparent external assessment.
The residents asked the ESB if the agency had learned anything from the most recent flooding and wondered why they hadn’t been given any flood warning. They wondered if flooding was allowed in Springfield to save larger built up areas in Limerick from flooding.
Councillor Crowe claimed that it takes six days for water to flow the course of the Shannon River yet, even though it had rained for almost all of the previous fortnight, residents did not encounter any flooding or excessive surface water till the evening of November 18.
“One resident told me that when she left her home to go shopping in the early afternoon the roads were bone dry but, when she returned three hours later, flood waters directly in-front of her house were almost at knee level. Springfield is more than a mile and a half from the banks of the River Shannon and the rapid flooding of their local area that took place on November 18 has led them to wonder if the ESB had been holding back water at the Parteen Weir for some time.
“Anything over and above the volume of water required for power generation in Ardnacrusha should be immediately released over the winter months – this would minimise the backlog of water and possibly prevent the flooding of communities along the lower Shannon,” he said.
Expressing concern about the frequency of flooding in Springfield, Councillor Pascal Fitzgerald asked if something could be done with the Mulcair River to prevent it from flooding.
“People say it was a one-off event. I don’t believe this is the case. Unless some work is carried out over the coming months the same thing could happen again next winter.
“Residents in Springfield got no warning of the flooding. They deserve some protection and it is not good enough to have peoples’ houses flooding in Springfield every one or two years. Residents’ livelihoods could be gone in an hour when there is flooding,” he said.
Councillor Pat Hayes proposed that the ESB, the Office of Public Works and the Department of the Environment should come together to find a resolution to this problem while Councillor Pat Burke wondered would it make a difference if water was released during the winter months.
Councillor Michael Begley asked the ESB if it had identified a solution, how much would it cost and when would it be put in place.