Anton McNulty
antonmcnulty@mayonews.ie
Mayo County Council have stated that they had ‘no issues’ with the noise levels generated during hydro-testing of the Corrib gas offshore pipeline despite complaints from people living close to the pipeline’s land valve in Glengad.
Residents in the area complained of ‘unbearable’ high pitched noise continuously over the June Bank holiday weekend as work on the pipeline was being carried out. The work carried out by oil and gas services giant, Halliburton involved the inspection of the offshore gas pipeline using a cleaning ‘pig’ to test the integrity of the pipe from the land valve at Glengad to the gas field.
Padraig Walsh, Engineer with Mayo County Council, informed last week’s monthly meeting of the Belmullet Electoral Area Committee that the developer on the Corrib project are obliged to inform the Council if work was to bring the noise levels above the normal level. He said the Council were informed and households were notified by letter that the work would take place.
Mr Walsh was questioned by councillors on the noise levels after complaints by constituents but he said the Council monitored the noise levels on Friday, June 1, the day the operation commenced and there were ‘no issues’ with the noise levels.
He explained the decibel levels were at 42 with 65 the limit allowed and the normal levels in the 30’s.
He admitted that they did not monitor the noise levels over the weekend and were awaiting a report of the developers own monitoring of the noise on the site.
Cllr Rose Conway-Walsh asked that because the activity took place over a weekend was there any way the Council could monitor it out of hours or have random testing. Mr Walsh replied that this was a unique one-off operation but said monitoring noise levels over a weekend would be something they would be open to looking at in the future.
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