Clean Water & Sanitation

Sewage in Relation to Housing

As mentioned in the discussion on housing, planning permission for one-off builds is rarely being granted by Galway County Council these days due to concerns around sewage and septic tanks. Conamara South is in desperate need of more homes yet progress in this area is being hampered by lack of development on upgrading and increasing the capacity of our wastewater treatment plants. In short, without adequate wastewater treatment infrastructure, Conamara South will not get planning approval for the scale of housing that is required by the growing population. Sewage should now be an urgent and fundamental concern of Galway County Council, not only from a water quality perspective, but from a housing development perspective as well.  

Safe Swimming Water

There are few things more depressing than living by water and not being able to swim in it due to pollution. There is an urgent need to fix our wastewater treatment throughout the region. With rising seawater temperatures and increased rainfall, the situation is now urgent and land-based mitigations (nature based and otherwise) must be implemented to relieve the flow of agricultural runoff and raw sewage out to our rivers, lakes and sea.

I am also very concerned about the ecology and water quality of Lough Corrib. It is essential that Galway County Council works with community, research, regulatory groups and farmers to prevent eutrophication caused by increased loads of nutrients into waterways from occurring, as this is a major ongoing threat. Efforts to prevent eutrophication must be continuous and not piecemeal.

Drinking Water

Climate modelling suggests we are going to have wetter winters and drier summers, with more extreme weather events such as storms, flooding and more intense rainfall. This will create the perfect conditions for our water quality to deteriorate.  I believe that Galway County Council should carry out independent lab tests of the drinking water throughout the region whether it be from an Uisce Éireann managed source or a private well or community water scheme. Lab results should also be interpreted and provided to residents and published to a publicly accessible database with guidance on next steps if problems are identified. I want to see much stronger oversight and liaison with Uisce Éireann and penalties imposed on their failure to provide clean drinking water to households and businesses.