Water is life

Water is life

19 Jul 1970

IT IS IRONIC that with the announcement of the publication of a new booklet, “Water is Life” by the Water Pollution Advisory Council it should at the same time be reported that Dublin County Council has been fined £300 for polluting the Dodder and the Poddle, and that polluting phosphorus is seeping into the Lakes of Killarney. The Council, set up under the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act, has a primary function to advise the Minister for the Environment on water pollution matters. As part of its task it is collecting all available information on the state of rivers, lakes and other inland waters.

It would not be unkind to suggest that the Council is late in beginning its task of looking for pollution, and that it will not have far to go to find it. It is not the Council’s fault that in the face of almost despairing appeals from Mullingar and the eventual withdrawal of development by the Inland Fisheries Trust, the Government dithered until Lough Ennell, one of the finest trout lakes in Europe, was reduced to a stagnant, phosphorous-poisoned lake. Happily, at the last minute, an attempt is now being made to restore it. Starting off with the advantage of a country relatively free of heavy industrial development, we have done little else but crow about clean water. We kept up this pretence until eventually, in an annual report, Bord Failte threatened that it would no longer tell the world a lie about the quality of Irish water. The principal aim of the booklet “Water Is Life” is to create an awareness of the need to safeguard our rivers and lakes and to foster an appreciation of clean water- The booklet will be circulated widely, particularly among schools and youth bodies. It is excellently produced. Notably, it concentrates not on how good we are, but on how good it is to have clean water, and how everybody can help to cherish it. The Council must have had its tongue in its cheek when it included among those who will receive the booklet, the local authorities. It is on the shoulders of the local authorities, as administrators, that the success or failure of the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act ultimately rests.

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