FIVE miles west of the Ceide Fields Interpretative Centre on the north Mayo coast, the small community of Belderg has a problem with its water supply.
It has also fallen into an administrative limbo because of plans to decentralise responsibility for group water schemes to local authorities. As a result a community which came up with an innovative and progressive solution to its water pollution problems is becoming corroded with cynicism and frustration at the political system.
When the community found its water had become contaminated with E coli from sheep droppings, it set about finding the best solution, according to the operator of the local group water scheme, Mr Martin Martensen.
The group consulted microbiologists and water suppliers at home and abroad. It was told the traditional method of treating water, chlorination, was not the one best suited to bog water because of its acidic nature.
It applied to the Department of the Environment for a grant for a treatment plant which would use a series of filters to remove the brown discoloration from the water, and then use ultra-violet light to kill off any germs. It was regarded by the Department's engineers as a good idea, with the potential for application elsewhere. A £92,000 grant for the plant was approved last December.
In the meantime, however, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, announced his package of measures for group water schemes.
It included a plan to transfer responsibility for the schemes to local authorities.
The Belderg group, which had hoped to have its new treatment plant in place in time for the tourist season, has not got its grant. But a lot of voluntary preparatory work by the local community, digging trenches ford pipes and the like, has been completed.
ABOUT 50,000 visitors come to the Ceide Fields centre every year, and many of them stay in and around Belderg. Now the group water scheme is wondering if it has a legal liability to warn visitors that the water is contaminated, according to Mr Martensen. It is reluctant to do that, he says, because of the obvious negative impact it would have on the tourist trade in the area.
When he contacted the Department about the matter recently, he was told the files had been transferred to Mayo County Council.
The council told him it did not have the resources, at the moment, to deal with the volume of additional work created by the transfer of responsibility.
There the matter rests, until the Department and the local authorities get together and work out the nuts and bolts of the transfer. In the meantime, Belderg will not get its treatment, plant in time for the summer season.