Water problems everywhere

“Because the explosion in intensive farming was not counterbalanced by statutory environmental legislation, farmers ride roughshod over environmental concerns.”


Roderick O’Sullivan

The news that Ireland’s bottled water has become contaminated comes as no surprise. Once upon a time, with our small population and innumerable lakes and rivers, Ireland’s waters were a byword for health. It beggars belief that Ennis’ citizens must still boil their drinking-water - for the third consecutive year! Galway’s water has recovered from the cryptosporidium epidemic that hospitalised 200 people but the city’s reputation as a First-World tourist destination still lies in tatters.
While our drinking-waters veer between ‘suspect’ and ‘undrinkable’, sales of bottled-water - an unheard of commodity ten years ago - have soared to record levels. While Ireland’s EPA admits that 20 communal supplies ‘pose a risk to health’, it’s common knowledge that virtually every waterway, reservoir, aquifer or deep well is so contaminated by pathogens that only expensive filtration, disinfection or chemical-treatment renders them remotely drinkable.
Ireland holds the second highest number of guilty verdicts in the EU Court for environmental crimes. Because the explosion in intensive farming was not counterbalanced by statutory environmental legislation, farmers ride roughshod over environmental concerns. Human sewage is treated prior to disposal, agricultural wastes from Ireland’s 6.5 million cattle, 1.75 million pigs and 12 million poultry are not. They are land-spread with no enforceable environmental safeguards. Irish cattle daily secrete millions of gallons of waste (a cow’s volume of urine/faeces is 16 times that of a human), while the average farm’s slurry-storing facility is 50,000 gallons.
Fishery Boards’ surveys identify 55% of farms as posing ‘serious pollution risks’; some farms possess no slurry-containment facilities, the animals’ excreta simply ‘disappears’. That animal wastes make ‘excellent fertilisers’ is a myth - land-spreading is simply the easiest mode of waste disposal. After 30 years of relentless land-spreading, Irish soils are supersaturated and no longer absorb the wastes which are flushed underground by rainfall into deep, neighbouring water-tables. Farmyard-washings, slurries, liquid afterbirths, etc. are similarly dispatched, transporting incalculable numbers of e-coli, salmonella, adenoviruses (31 types), hepatitis E, worms (7 types), cryptosporidium, giardia, listeria, etc. These pathogens are responsible for the majority of drinking-water contamination. Newly-born calves can each secrete 50 billion cryptosporidium oocysts (yes, 50 billion) which survive on land or in water for 18 months.
Pathogen-rich effluents from Ireland’s 28 million tonnes of annual silage production are equally problematic. 150 times more polluting than domestic sewage, accidentally or deliberately discharged silage effluent causes extensive destruction, especially if receiving water-levels are low. Witness the silent death-throes of our wonderful western lakes: Lough Carra, with its meagre human population, has almost been destroyed by agricultural effluent; ditto Loughs Conn, Sheelin and Leane. Lough Mask deteriorates daily. Agricultural pollution has wiped out the charr and much aquatic life in Lough Corrib; Galway’s cryptosporidium epidemic resulted from this lake being awash with pathogens. All officials blamed human sewage for this epidemic, never mentioning that agricultural wastes were the far more likely culprit.
Until Ireland’s waters are protected from the side-effects of ‘cheap ‘n’ cheerful’ agricultural disposal methods, pathogens will increase, not decrease, in our drinking-water - bottled water included.

Roderick O’Sullivan carried out a freshwater survey on Lough Corrib in 1995 and laid a charge in the EU Parliment in Brussles against the Irish State for its failure to protect Ireland’s waterways. Last year Ireland was found guilty of this charge in the EU Court.

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