No quick fix to flooding issues, says Louth County Council as \u2018mutli-factorial- approach promised\n<\/p>\n
At the monthly meeting of Dundalk Municipal District, councillors heard that continuous weather warnings for intense rainfall combined with high tides had created a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of coastal, river and sewer flooding across north Louth in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
The greater Dundalk area, including the Cooley Peninsula and Blackrock has been worst affected by the severe weather in recent weeks <\/p>\n
Director of Services for Operations and Environmental Delivery David Hanratty said the recent flooding issues highlighted \u201ccertain weaknesses in our flood management system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had flooding on rivers, coastal flooding, flooding in mountains and a surge in sewers. Obviously the volume of rain and the saturated ground contributed to all the land-based issues, but the coastal flooding was completely separate.\u201d<\/p>\n
He highlighted that storms had battered the coastline along Blackrock, north Louth, and in the south of the county.<\/p>\n
“We had that perfect storm which was an issue,\u201d he said, adding that a \u201chuge amount of joined up thinking\u201d was needed by several stakeholders to look at finding solutions.<\/p>\n
He added that in the short term Louth County Council’s flood study team would assess any immediate interventions, and they will also be working with external stakeholders – the OPW, Uisce \u00c9ireann and various landowners to see what further solutions could be found.<\/p>\n
“But, I want to be clear that there is no switch we can turn on on a pump that would solve the problem, there is no river we can dredge that will solve the problem straightaway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The local authority will look at a \u201cmulti-factorial\u201d response to the flooding threats.<\/p>\n
“It is something we are acutely aware of and over the coming weeks and months we will respond to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the council are \u201clearning the lessons\u201d and are working to access any funding which becomes available.<\/p>\n
A \u20ac1.2 million application has been made to the department to cover the costs of damage to the Louth road network, which the council are hopeful of securing at least some.<\/p>\n
The Director said the council had to date received no applications to the Emergency Assistance Scheme, which is available to both residential properties and businesses adversely impacted by the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich I suppose is a good thing that we are not getting a lot of people impacted,\u201d he added, reminding councillors to make local people aware of the help that is available.<\/p>\n
The meeting had heard calls for community support for elderly or vulnerable people living in flooded areas.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hanratty said the council had placed the Civil Defence on standby, and the Red Cross had offered humanitarian assistance if needed.<\/p>\n
The meeting followed confirmation that Louth County Council has submitted an application for \u20ac1.2 million to the department to cover the costs of damage to the Louth road network.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No quick fix to flooding issues, says Louth County Council as \u2018mutli-factorial- approach promised At the monthly meeting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,22011,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-294335","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-olivia-ryan","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294335","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=294335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}