Water quality levels in Tipperary continue to decline according to a new report

The quality of water across Tipperary has continued to decline over the past few years, councillors in Tipperary Town were recently told.

Fran Igoe of the Local Authority Waters Programme (Lawpro), gave a presentation on the report regarding water quality in the county, to members at the recent September meeting of the Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel Municipal District.

The report outlined that water quality across the county dropped significantly and that Tipperary saw a significant drop in quality compared to other counties in Ireland over the same period of time.

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Independent Cllr Liam Browne began by asking Mr Igoe how much of the decline in water quality seen in Tipperary, was a result of inaction by Tipperary County Council themselves historically.

“How much of that decline is down to the inaction of Tipperary County Council itself historically, and Uisce Eireann currently. How much are they to blame? If you take Golden for example, there’s still raw sewerage going into the water in the River Suir and it’s continuing all the way down the river,” asked Cllr Browne.

Responding to Cllr Browne, Mr Igoe said: “In terms of water quality, yes there has been a significant decline. It’s now gone down 32%, we’re waiting for the next EPA report, which will be out in the next few months. The significant pressure in Tipperary is agriculture, but there are other pressures,” explained Mr Igoe.

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He told the meeting that LAWPRO were aware of municipal waste-water being another reason for the decline in water quality in the county. However, he said that this wouldn’t be the same level as other figures and relayed again that the most significant reason for the decline in quality was agriculture.

“The Golden situation has been raised since I started in LAWPRO. We sent on 220 submissions that were made regarding the river waste management plan around the Golden plant. We did pass these onto Irish Water. They have their own investment programme and we spoke to them before about it,” said Mr Igoe. He told Cllr Browne that they will keep making the case to Irish Water to make the issue a priority for them.