The Environmental Protection Agency has visited a waste water treatment plant in North Tipp in the wake of complaints from a local angling club.
It follows ongoing problems with the plant at Ballycommon with raw sewerage apparently discharging directly into the Nenagh River.
Efforts by both Uisce Éireann and Tipperary County Council to resolve the issue were unsuccessful.
Secretary of the Ormond Anglers Association Joe O’Donoghue says the treatment plant is simply not fit for purpose which forced them to ask the EPA to intervene.
“It’s doing untold damage to the river – to the ecosystem of the river. It’s very noticeable at the moment the fly life there in the evenings – you’d have clouds of Olives and Sedge’s that fishermen would know all about – they’re not there anymore. You go up above the town there’s still loads of them up there but down in that particular area for some reason they’re gone and probably it’s the damage that’s being done to the ecosystem of the river by this sewerage plant. You can’t measure it – you don’t realise it until its gone and the damage is done.”
Following the EPA inspection Uisce Éireann have been instructed to close the runoff pipe into the Nenagh River.
Joe O’Donoghue says the plant cannot cope with the number of houses in the area.
He told Tipp FM that the Ballycommon Waste Water Treatment Plant definitely doesn’t do what it says on the tin.
“It doesn’t treat anything. In Ballycommon it’s a tank in the ground to which effluent flows in. The only thing happens there is there’s air blown into it causing it to bubble but there’s no treatment. It’s a holding tank, that’s all it is.
“This has been going on for a long time the more houses that’s built down there. Unfortunately last year we had to object to houses being built which is not what anyone would like to do at this particular time with such a scarcity of houses. But it was the only lever we had and we did object to 17 or 18 houses being built there because we knew this plant just simply couldn’t cope with it.”
