Neill O’Neill
MAYO County Council have categorically stated that the water in both the Bellanaboy River and Carrowmore Lake is safe and does not contain unusually high levels of aluminium. The results of three years of continuous monitoring of both were released at a meeting of the Belmullet Electoral Area Committee last week, and were backed up by independent monitoring conducted in the area by the HSE.
Informing the meeting of the findings of the tests, Director of Services in the Belmullet Electoral Area, Mr Peter Hynes, said that there had been a lot of scaremongering going on in relation to the safety of water in the region and the levels of aluminium it contains. He added that he hoped the conclusive evidence he was now putting in the public domain would put a stop to this.
The North West Regional Fisheries Board have also worked with Mayo County Council on monitoring the Bellanaboy River and Carowmore Lake, and are satisfied that the aquatic environment in both are fine and healthy, according to Mr Hynes.
He described the water in the region as the most monitored in the country, ‘and possibly on the planet’, in terms of aluminium levels in the public water supply.
“The report is very comprehensive and will confirm for everyone who approaches the subject with an open mind that there is nothing wrong with the water,” he said. “The HSE tests were taken at the end of the distribution point while the Council’s testing was done at the beginning of this, which gives rise to a small discrepancy in the results.”
Mayo County Council’s Project Team has been monitoring surface waters in and around the Bellanaboy terminal site since early 2005. For the last three years they have been specifically testing the Bellanaboy River and Carrowmore Lake.
There are two sampling locations on the Belanaboy River – BEL 1 which is upstream of the out-fall from the development site, and BEL 2, which is downstream of where the out-fall from the development site enters the river. An additional sampling location – CL1 – is located near the pump house at the raw water inlet to the Erris Regional Water Supply on Carrowmore Lake, and samples are taken at all three locations on a weekly basis.
In addition to this, monthly testing also commenced in 2005 of a number of the main tributaries into Carrowmore Lake. Each sample from every location is tested for a number of parameters including total aluminium.
The results of both the chemical and biological monitoring programmes indicate that the surface water discharge from the Corrib gas terminal site has had no significant impact on the water quality or levels of total aluminium in the Bellanaboy River.
Monitoring of the final treated drinking water supply leaving the Erris Water Treatment Plant in Barnatra is carried out on a daily basis at the plant, and each sample is also tested for total aluminium.
On top of all these measures the HSE also tests the Erris Regional Public Water Supply on a monthly basis, and has analysed 142 samples – including for total aluminium – in the period from 2006 to 2008. In that time there were four exceedances in aluminium levels – two on January 23 last year when problems occurred with a soda ash pump – and one each on March 15 and December 17 last year, which were attributed to sediment in the distribution system. One of the exceedances, on January 23, was 27 times over the average and Peter Hynes apologised for this last week. The remaining instances of exceedance were significantly lower and much closer to the average readings.
The current monitoring programme around the Corrib gas terminal development site and in the Carrowmore catchment will continue for the remainder of the construction period.
