Liffey water still "iffy", report says

DUBLIN's Liffey may no longer be "sniffy" but its water quality is still very "iffy". According to a Greenpeace Ireland report, most rivers on the Liffey catchment are polluted.

Over 50 per cent of the surveyed channel length within the catchment is classified as "unsatisfactory", according to the report, based on data supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency. The findings are a "sad reflection on Government and local authority environmental policy", Ms Clare O'Grady Walshe, Greenpeace executive director, said yesterday.

While the EPA's "D" classification of serious pollution may be decreasing on the river, the level of moderate pollution is increasing, the report says.

The Government must become more active in ensuring that pollution monitoring is carried out by local authorities the organisation says, and the EPA must also be given more resources to do its work.

"We have no problem with EPA figures, but we are not happy with how they are portrayed and there are only three EPA staff to monitor and survey all the State's rivers and streams" Mr John Bowler of Greenpeace Ireland commented at yesterday's publication. Chemical testing of waterways should be carried out every two weeks, but this was impossible due to staff shortages, he said.

The report, entitled The Lif fry's Descent, was compiled by Mr Peter McDonnell for Greenpeace Ireland. It is the latest in a series on inland waterways commissioned by the organisation since 1994.

The author says the causes of pollution are often ill defined, but sewage, industrial discharges run off from quarrying activity, agricultural and forestry practices all contribute. Some 40 km of class "A" (satisfactory) river has been lost on the Liffey and the class "B" (slightly polluted) river length has increased from 22 to 40.5 km. Class "C" (moderately polluted) river has risen from 56 to 85 km.

Some 32 rivers and streams feed into the Liffey catchment, which originates in the Wicklow mountains near Tonduff some 20 km south of Dublin city. Much of the catchment still supplies drinking water: the Liffey and Dodder supply over 350 million litres a day.

Water quality has deteriorated with the city's development, even though the Liffey's smell was eradicated in 1985.

Greenpeace Ireland intends to raise awareness of the river's condition among communities living along its banks, but says that it is also an election issue, given the implications for drinking water supply. After Sellafield, the next biggest environmental threat to the public is the state of inland waterways, Ms O'Grady Walshe said.

"People have to wake up and realise that clean water, not oil, will become one of the major geopolitical disputes of the next century," she said.