Sir, - Prosecution of the Irish State by the EC for failing to protect Loughs Conn and Derg from pollution coincides with the publication of a water quality report on Lough Corrib by the Anglers Federation. The largest independent water quality survey of any Irish lake, 31 scattered aquatic environments were scientifically analysed and serious water degradation diagnosed in many parts of the lough. These depressing findings contradict the State's "prime condition" categorisation of the lake which rests on monthly mid lake sampling of the lough's deepest waters. Similar simplistic monitoring designated Lough Conn as being healthy for 20 years, until it was "suddenly" diagnosed as polluted in 1993.
Lough Corrib's predicament is far from unique. In the North Loughs Neagh and Erne are degraded; in the South, Loughs Derg, Conn, Sheelin, Ree, Cullin, Ennell, Gowna, Oughter are seriously polluted. Once a bye word for water purity, Lough Mask displays signs of littoral degradation. Many lakes in Cavan, Longford Monaghan and Cork are in very poor health. Swimming in parts of the Shannon is a health hazard shellfish on Waterford's coast are poisoned by agricultural bacteria from the Barrow, Nore and Suir 66 per cent of productive deep wells in Galway and Mayo are contaminated by E.coli. Many rivers now carry five times the concentrations of phosphate necessary to cause pollution.
The majority of water pollutants originate from agricultural wastes, the remainder from poorly treated sewage via out moded or malfunctioning sewage treatment plants. Ireland's booming agricultural economy has resulted in increasing volumes of farming wastes being spread on land as fertiliser or nutrient. These have now overwhelmed the absorbing capacities of the countryside. Spread on land in winter during bouts of maximal rainfall no crops are present to absorb the nutrients, so most are washed into neighbouring waterways. Recommended land spreading rates are considerably higher than in Britain. Teagasc now acknowledges that much Irish land is now so supersaturated with agricultural slurries that future fertiliser or slurry applications are superfluous. The massive funding by the EC to restructure Ireland's obsolete sewage treatment plants will be wasted unless the State faces the problem of disposing agricultural slurries in environmentally acceptable ways. The extra £700 million earmarked for Irish farmers as part of the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme is failing its prime objective, i.e. protection of our waterways.
The Deparmtnet of Agriculture insists such pollution is the Department of the Environment's responsibility. The Department of Environment claims it lies within the domains of the local authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency. Local authorities responsible for approximately one third of water quality degradation, exonerate themselves by claiming insufficient funds to improve sewage treatment. No local authority has ever prosecuted itself for water pollution offences! Unwillingness to take either legal action against, or to levy realistic fines on, water polluters, means desecration of waterways remains a trivial legal misdemeanour rather than an environmental and anti democratic crime.
A legal toothless tiger, the Environmental Protection Agency oversees industrial, not agricultural discharges. These are mainly governed by Teagasc recommendations which carry no mandatory component. Issuing compulsory guidelines to arrest or reduce pollution from agriculture would fall to the Department of Agriculture but, as already stated, this Department considers water pollution to be the Department of the Environment's concern. And so on and so forth, each relevant Agency confidently refers to appropriate legislation, to another department or to another bureau to solve the water pollution problem. While this chronic state of governmental buck passing graduates to an artform, the country's waterways deteriorate.
Ireland is bereft of heavy industry, has rivers and lakes in abundance, its population numbers less than that of Rome. Yet water pollution has reached epidemic proportions without any semblance of State discomfort or remedial policy. Unless Irish waterways are quickly granted greater protection then our already tattered overseas reputation and green image, on which much of our agricultural and tourist earnings depend, will be lost forever. The final hope is that the environmentally aware EC may prove more effective in protecting Lough Corrib and its neighbouring lakes than the moribund Irish State Authorities. - Yours, etc.,
Federation of Lough Corrib
Anglers,
Moycullen,
Co Galway.