The news that a £1 million funding allocation has been promised for a new sewage treatment plant for Thomastown in Co Kilkenny is a joint victory for the energetic local action committee and for fishery conservation interests.
The picturesque town on the Nore has effectively been precluded from any building development for many months because of a serious pollution problem in the river.
Now there is every prospect that much-needed house-building, both public and private, will be able to resume in the area in the near future; as soon, in fact, as the county council receives formal notification from the Department of the Environment to proceed with the appointment of consultants to design the sewage scheme.
The Minister, Mr Dempsey, broke the good news to a meeting of Kilkenny County Council last week. Even though the design stage and the statutory planning process will mean a lead time of up to 18 months before the new plant is in operation, the barrier to housing development should be lifted once sanction for the project is confirmed.
The river is a central and defining element of the town's character, and its water quality is vital, not just to Thomastown and the immediate area, but also to the smaller towns and villages downstream as well as the hundreds of visiting anglers.
The existing sewage plant, built in 1967, has only provided the most basic, primary treatment and has simply become overloaded. Domestic sewage and agricultural/industrial effluent entering the river have seriously degraded the water quality and reduced fish stocks.
The Southern Regional Fisheries Board, with a statutory responsibility for protecting and developing this and other rivers in the region, was obliged to take action.
It did so once scientific evidence was available, by implementing a policy of objecting to all housing projects for the town and its environs which proposed to discharge untreated effluent to the public foul sewer. In other words, into the river.
The evidence of severe damage to water quality had become incontrovertible. The standard index of water quality applied to rivers runs from a high of 5 down to a low of 1, and tests carried out periodically at Thomastown Bridge over a quarter of a century reveal a steady deterioration.
In 1971 and 1975 the index was 4-5; in 1979 it was 3-4; in 1981 and 1984 it was 3, and in 1991 and 1995 it was down to 2, a level indicating serious pollution.
Mr Patrick Kilfeather, of the fisheries board, points out that the Nore is a designated river under the EC Fresh Water Directive. "We got no pleasure out of lodging protests, but there are State fisheries in the area, and we felt we had to take a stand," he said.
Clearly, this firm policy by the board, along with strong lobbying by a waste water action committee formed by Thomastown people themselves, was instrumental in securing political priority for the problem.
The board "very much welcomes" the Minister's announcement, Mr Kilfeather added. It is now anxious that the county council should proceed with action to appoint consultants and ensure that construction of the treatment plant begins before the end of this year. A local councillor, Mr Kevin Fennelly, was delighted with the announcement, which seems to clear the way for the treatment plant project. He pointed out that Thomastown and its environs have grown into the second-biggest population unit in the county, after Kilkenny itself.
Mr Fennelly paid tribute to the other people on the action committee, representing local development, business, tourism and angling interests, which was formed only a few months ago to campaign on the problem.
Their brief but effective experience as a pressure group will probably be called upon again as Thomastown addresses its second major structural problem, the need for a by-pass to alleviate the burden of the constant traffic flow through the narrow streets of the town.
An allocation of £125,000 has been made for a design study on this project, but the by-pass itself will be a huge undertaking which will have to compete for funding against a whole range of other major and much-needed road development schemes in the south-east.