One waste water treatment plant in Tipperary has been singled out by the EPA as a priority for upgrading.
A report released today is highlighting the areas Uisce Éireann needs to address most urgently to stop raw sewage and pollution affecting our rivers.
The Environmental Protection Agency says the plant in Mullinahone is causing a significant risk of pollution in the water it’s discharging into.
88 other sites around the country have also been named for either discharging raw sewage or creating a risk of pollution.
EPA inspector David Shannon says the main urban areas in the county are mainly compliant but there are long-standing issues at Mullinahone: ”In Tipperary, there’s no areas that are discharging raw sewage every day. They all have treatment plants in place.
When we look at the 12 large towns in the area that have to comply with European Union treatment standards, they’re all complying with the standards.”
”However, when we do look at the polluted areas, rivers that are polluted, we see that in discharges from the Mullinahone treatment plant, they’re not treated to the standards set by the EPA and consequently there’s an impact on river quality and health of the river,” he told TippFM News.
Uisce Éireann Programme Manager Paul Fallon says they are aware of the issues at Mullinahone and are trying to figure out the best way to deal with it: ”The receiving water that the wastewater is discharging into, doesn’t have the assimilative capacity to take that, and it’s at risk of causing pollution.”
”It’s currently being assessed and the preferred solution will be selected
and it will move on to the next stage, and design and planning very shortly after that.
So that will address the impact that it’s having on the receiving water.”
Uisce Éireann says it’s not expecting to have the upgrades completed until 2031.
