Newport ‘robbed of its potential’ with delay in sewage treatment plant

Standing tall and pointing forward, a statue of Granuaile greets you as you arrive in Newport.

The heritage town is over 300 years old and boasts very strong connections to Grace O’Malley and was the ancestral home of Grace Kelly. It also has a historic problem with a long-delayed sewerage system.

Cormac Kelly, from the Newport Business Association (NBA), says: “We’re not the first group of citizens from Newport that have tried to tackle this. It’s being going on for thirty years.

“This is robbing Newport of its potential. There’s no houses being built in Newport at the moment because of the lack of the sewerage system. A working sewerage system would help the town grow, help every business and help the GAA club.”

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For locals, the frustration is threefold: the delay in building a water treatment plant, a perceived lack of communication on how the project is progressing and the servicing of the existing sewerage facility.

Uisce Éireann had briefed both Oireachtas members and councillors earlier this week that the current delay is the granting of a Maritime Usage Licence (MUL) from the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (MARA) to put an acoustic doppler current profiler in Clew Bay to map the currents and it will also further validate a study from the Marine Institute.

In the meantime, Westport TD Keira Keogh met with Minister of State John Cummins on the issue.

She was informed that Newport was specifically discussed at meetings with Uisce Éireann and MARA and said it was “great to hear Newport was discussed and great to hear both MARA and Uisce Éireann are committing to changes to clear the backlog to the MUL and MAC licences over the coming months.”

The Fine Gael TD is meeting her party colleague, John Cummins, again on Wednesday to get specifics on what actions will be taken.

READ MORE: Mayo TD admits delays in progressing Newport Treatment Plant are 'not acceptable'

Protest

ON Monday, community representatives handed in a letter to the water utility’s Castlebar office and spoke with representatives from Uisce Éireann.

The protest was organsied by Cllr Brendan Mulroy on Monday. He was joined by fellow councillors Peter Flynn, John O’Malley, Chris Maxwell and Patsy O’Brien.

One of the attendees was the normally optimistic Martin Dillane, Chair of Newport Area and District development company (NADDCo). He told The Mayo News: “We have to cry stop. We need a finish date. The town is being held to ransom. There’s no development. There’s no buildings. There’s no new housing. Everything is at a standstill. Five businesses in the town have closed this year alone.”

Addressing the gathered crowd, Patrick Greene, portfolio manager with Uisce Éireann, emphasised that the sewage treatment plant in Newport “was 100 percent a priority. Unfortunately, there is a lot of complexity in delivering these projects.

“We are in the process of doing a shortlist of sites so we can pick the most suitable site and we are also going to determine the best position for the outfall.

“I know it’s frustrating when you don’t see any outputs but it is something we are working very hard at.”

He also expressed “huge frustration” that there are no statutory times for the MAC process with MARA, which will be needed to build the plant and associated pipes.

Irish Water representatives addressing the Newport community representatives and councillors outside their Castlebar office

Responding to a request to return to a previous practice of emptying the tanks in Newport, Iarla Moran from Irish Water responded that “using a tanker to take the effluent away from Newport would be a mammoth task. I don’t think it’s that practical. I don’t think that would be a practical option.”

He also said he would look into the maintenance of the current pumping stations in the town. The Mayo News visited one such site on Thursday which was covered in overgrowth and showed no signs of having been serviced recently.

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Speaking afterwards, Cormac Kelly said the exchange was ‘positive.’

“It’s the first communication that Newport Business Association has had with Uisce Éireann. They have promised to keep us updated with progress, good or bad, which is good. We know it’s not going to be plain sailing but we want to keep informed that’s all we’re asking for.

“At this moment in time, there’s still raw sewage being pumped into the bay and that’s been happening for 20 years. I just want to make sure this won’t happen for another 20 or 10 or five years.”

Cllr Brendan Mulroy said that “heretofore, every single statement they’ve made has been factually incorrect, and no work has been done on the ground to date. It was due to be delivered by 2023 and then by 2025 and now they’re talking about 2030. So hopefully, with the community behind us on this occasion and leading it out from the front, that we will get a resolution to the job.”

‘Embarrassing’

BACK in Newport and paddling in the Blackoak River beneath the statue of the Pirate Queen, local man John Chambers was taking a tour group on a scenic kayak tour.

Speaking from the water’s edge, John recalled the embarrassment back in May when one of the people on a kayak tour asked if there had been an oil spill in the water.

“The shit was so bad on top of the water, it looked like an oil slick. I just had to tell her a boat broke down. It’s embarrassing.”

John had previously invested in water slides and dive boards for the water before the water became polluted. It is now sitting unused in a storage unit outside Westport.

John Chambers kayaking in the Blackoak River

Sharon McGovern grew up swimming in the river. It was only in the last three years that she had to stop because the sewage in the river was “absolutely disgusting.”

A fan of wild camping, Sharon kayaked out to one of the islands in Clew Bay earlier this year.

“In the morning, my friends came out to meet me. We were going for a paddle around the bay, and I walked down onto the shore and it was full of toilet paper. It was just all over. It’s just so embarrassing.

“It’s just so frustrating for me because of the benefits and possibilities in Newport for tourism, for kayaking, for stand up paddle boarding, for water skiing, for all that kind of infrastructure and the blue way.

“If we had access to our water that was clean and clear, it’s a safe harbor. It’s a lovely swimming area. It’s in the center of the town and everything is around it in terms of all the festivals that would go on and everything. So it’s just disheartening.”

Kayakers paddling through raw sewage in Newport

That embarrassment is shared by Darragh McGee of Clew Bay Charters: “It’s highly embarrassing trying to explain to people, especially tourists, coming into such a beautiful town like Newport that we have raw sewage flowing into our harbour in 2025. There’s been occasions where sanitary towels have been floating down past the boat, when people are standing there waiting to go out on the water.

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“It also affects the ecological system in the harbour. We’ve about two kilometers of a stretch of the approach channel into Newport and there isn’t one bit of shellfish alive on either side of the shoreline going out there as a direct result of the raw sewage being pumped into the harbour.”

The waterfront should be such a focal point for the town and the local Tidy Towns group installed new seating in Princess Grace park to relax and enjoy the view of the quay.

Fran McDonnell, Chair of the Newport Tidy Towns, says: “It’s used so much by the people and school kids in the town but sometimes the smell is so bad from the holding tanks they can’t use it.”

Looking out from Joe Mullowney’s pharmacy in the picturesque main street, you wouldn’t notice the gully on the road outside.

Unfortunately, this gully has made itself known when fumes of sewage seep out and drift into the pristine pharmacy.

Reluctant campaigner

THE proud Newport man moved home to run this vital service and is a reluctant campaigner but he tells The Mayo News that sometimes the fumes are so potent on the street that he sometimes nearly has to consider closing the doors of his pharmacy.

“I’m trying to run a healthcare setting here, and it’s almost like third world stuff here at times. We made a lot of capital investment in this premise to fix problems that were internal.

“It’s just not acceptable in 2025 in a town like Newport, to have conditions like that in businesses that are paying their rates and are trying to provide health care services. It’s just not acceptable

“Most people know what the problem is, you know that there’s no treatment system in the town.

“We’re all looking for that and I think Newport would benefit greatly if it was to be installed. That’s what we want.”