Knee deep

CLARE County Council stands indicted this week of breaking the very rules that it is empowered to uphold.

 

Irate householders in Kilfenora have had to endure a contamination of a number of group water schemes and individual wells because of the inadequacies of the council’s wastewater treatment plant in the village.

The plant gives secondary treatment to wastewater and discharges the treated effluent into a swallow hole at Ballybreen. Water from the Ballybreen swallow hole flows mainly in an underground conduit towards the Elmvale Springs, between Kilfenora and Kilnaboy, the headwaters of the Fergus.
The discharge to the swallow hole at Ballybreen has been in place since the ’70s. The council claims the current situation is not a new occurrence but it is newly discovered.

One irate resident, affected by the water contamination, revealed that water tests taken on May 3 last by council officials revealed an E-coli reading of 14 and bacteria coliform of 78. Both of the samples, she claimed, contained bacterial faecal contamination, indicating the presence of traces of animal and human waste.

While council officials have engaged locals, both collectively and individually, in terms of providing an interim solution and keeping them up to speed with ongoing developments, the same cannot be said as regards public representatives.

Councillors, it seems, have been kept in the dark as regards developments in Kilfenora, which has prompted those with suspicious minds to suggest it may be a deliberate tactic to conceal their embarrassment.

However, what the council did concede is that it was “an oversight” on their part not to inform the general public and public representatives as the concentration, they say, “was mainly focussed on solving the immediate problem of devising a means of alternative water supply”.

Kernel to the problem is the delay by the Environmental Protection Agency in issuing a certificate of authorisation for the discharge from the treatment plant to the Ballybreen swallow hole.

The council applied for that licence in December 2009 but believes it is unlikely they will be issued with a certificate for the existing discharge, as new regulations have since come into force. These regulations stipulate that direct discharges of effluent to groundwater are prohibited, other than in very exceptional circumstances.

Compounding the council’s problems is the lack of cash. They simply don’t have the financial resources to provide a new sewerage scheme for Kilfenora.

What they do have is a fund of approximately €130,000 from the Government’s Small Schemes Programme and the council’s own resources to implement a solution to eliminate the direct discharge without making any other upgrades to the system.

It is intended to spend this money before the end of 2012 but firstly the council needs to get an indication from the EPA of the type of solution that would be generally acceptable and the standards of effluent that the EPA would require.

Until they get that sanction, there is nothing Clare County Council can do to implement a permanent solution. Their hands are tied.

What price a life?
One in five homes in Clare tested by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland has high levels of radon gas. Fact.

Eleven homes in the county have been identified as having radon gas levels above the acceptable level in the past five months. Fact.

Two homes in Ennis had up to five times the acceptable level for radon gas with the occupants receiving a radiation dose equivalent to up to three chest X-rays per day. Fact.
Radon is the second-biggest cause of lung cancer after smoking and is directly linked to up to 200 lung cancer deaths each year. Fact.

In the latest publication of results from completed radon tests conducted by the RPII, of the 59 Clare homes tested during the past five months, 11 were found to be above the acceptable level.
In addition to the two homes with up to five times the acceptable level, there were nine homes – six in Ennis, two in Clarecastle and one in Tubber – that had radon levels above and up to three times the acceptable level.

Against such damning statistics, it beggars belief that people in Clare continue to play Russian roulette with their lives. It is particularly frightening given that measuring radon and, in the event of a high reading, fixing the problem are both relatively inexpensive and simple to so.

Stephanie Long, a senior scientist at the RPII, noted only a small fraction of homes in Clare have been tested for radon.  “Our research shows that, of those that have already been tested, there is a large percentage with high radon levels and so we are urging homeowners to take the radon test,” she emphasised.

In fact, thousands of homeowners in Clare have yet to test for radon and among them many are unknowingly living with a high risk to their family’s health.

“It is really important for people to test their home for radon, as this is the only way of knowing if your family is exposed to this cancer-causing gas,” Ms Long cautioned.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas. It has no smell, colour or taste and can only be detected using special detectors. Outdoors, radon quickly dilutes to harmless concentrations but when it enters an enclosed space, such as a house or other building, it can accumulate to unacceptably high concentrations. This gives rise to a radiation dose that may cause lung cancer.
Over the last two years, the RPII has conducted comprehensive public information campaigns. Yet it seems people continue to be careless about their health.

Radon can only be detected using special detectors. Remediation is inexpensive, as the detectors are cheap when measured against the possible consequences.