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The river in Courtown has become discoloured.<\/p>\n
Parts of the river in Courtown have become so polluted that it has turned a grey, almost white, colour in certain sections. Bringing the issue to the attention of the council\u2019s environmental department, Councillor Joe Sullivan said he had seen first-hand the pollution issues on the river. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was down there last weekend and the river was pure white, as if lime was in it,\u201d he said at the October meeting of the Gorey Kilmuckridge Municipal District (GKMD).<\/p>\n
\u201cI reported it to the council team and received word they had checked it and there was nothing to see here. The mistake I made was not getting a sample of it and getting it tested myself. Only then will I know what\u2019s in there. It\u2019s not muck, it hadn\u2019t started raining at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eager to locate the source of the problem, Cllr Sullivan then went to Smith\u2019s Cross where he said the water was \u201cas clear as day\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s coming from somewhere between Ashdown and Ballinatray. I\u2019m going to walk that river until I find where it comes out of,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He received support from Cllr Darragh McDonald who has previously raised concerns about the council\u2019s ability to accurately test bathing waters in the peak summer months. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere seems to a constant panic in Courtown about what\u2019s flowing into the harbour and the river, is there anything we can put in, like remote monitoring, to test it regularly?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
“We\u2019d have to investigate where it\u2019s going in at those particular points,\u201d replied environmental engineer Enda Brennan. \u201cIt\u2019d be no different to how we test the bathing waters. If you send on the locations we can direct our guys to that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cllr Pip Breen meanwhile, had his own ideas about where the issues were emanating from. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe sewage plant in Ballycanew is under serious pressure, it\u2019s not Courtown or Gorey that\u2019s polluting the river because there\u2019s plenty of capacity in the plants there, the only place I can think it could be originating is from Ballycanew,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The river in Courtown has become discoloured. Parts of the river in Courtown have become so polluted that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82,920],"class_list":{"0":"post-134958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-simon-bourke"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}