Sir, - For the third time in two years, the town of Clonmel has experienced very serious flooding. The town, low-lying in the Suir valley, has always had some winter flooding, but in the memory of the oldest citizens there has never been anything as extensive, pervasive or frequent as the recent inundations.
Allowing for changes in climate and extremes of weather, I suggest that one of the contributory factors has been the destruction of the old flood-plain of Clonmel. Immediately downstream of the town there were several fields, old water-meadows. These held the overflow form the river in times of flood, and became virtual winter-time lakes. The levels have now been raised and these fields have been built over.
Even with the experience of the floods of recent years, one of the few remaining fields is now being trunked, with a view to a housing development. And, as I write, Clonmel Corporation is filling in old marshland at Dungarvan Road. This also acted as a natural sponge and as a relief from the river in flood. The tributaries of the Suir, within the suburbs of the town itself, the Frenchman's, Boulick and Whiting streams, have all had the same treatment. They have been drained into culverts, and the fields which they once flooded have been developed as building sites.
On one of these streams there was a pond, opened to hold the water during flood. This has been filled and built upon. Another has had a substantial portion of its adjoining bog drained and "developed".
The Suir, and its tributaries in Clonmel have now nowhere to go in times of flood except into the streets of the town itself.
The Comeragh mountains, the natural watershed to the south of the town, have been damaged by over-grazing and over-burning. Recently, on a large area of the Monavullagh slopes I could not find a clump of heather; the water run-off is obvious and erosion well established.
There are now urgent demands, and rightly so, from the citizens (futilely putting sandbags at the doors) for a solution to this frequent flooding. There will, no doubt, be an engineering solution to what is seen as exclusively an engineering problem.
But, in the so-called redevelopment of Irish towns, is there ever a comprehensive study made of the environmental picture as a whole? Is the accumulated experience of the citizens ever considered? Is planning just an immediate, piecemeal response to the latest developer? - Yours, etc.,
Margaret Rossiter,
Powerstown Road, Clonmel, Co Tipperary.