Under the plan, which was submitted to An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la last December,<\/a> 2% of the annual flow of water would be taken from an existing reservoir at the Parteen Basin and then brought east by pipe.<\/p>\nTDs heard that 80% of landowners along the route of the proposed pipeline have formally signed up to an agreement with the utility for an agreed package.<\/p>\n
Aont\u00fa Deputy Peadar Toib\u00edn asked about the 20% of landowners who had not signed up for the voluntary package, and whether they would be subject to Compulsory Purchase Orders.<\/p>\n
Senior Project Manager with Uisce \u00c9ireann Gary Gibson acknowledged that there are some people opposed to the project, but said some of those who have not signed up might not have been able to prove ownership of the land yet.<\/p>\n
“We would use the CPO powers,” he said, if required, but he hoped it would not be necessary.<\/p>\n
Fix leaks first<\/p>\n
Several members of the committee raised the issue of leakage in the network, asking if pipes should not be fixed first, before embarking on The Water Supply Project.<\/p>\n
Uisce \u00c9ireann said that work was ongoing on leaks, with a reduction in leakage in Dublin from 37% to 29%.<\/p>\n
Fianna F\u00e1il TD for Offaly, Tony McCormack, said the pipeline was a very important piece of infrastructure and welcomed the fact that 80% of landowners had signed contracts with Uisce \u00c9ireann.<\/p>\n
He asked if everything could be done together, rather than on a phased basis, to avoid a decades-long project.<\/p>\n
Programme Director, Mike Healy said a lot of work would be undertaken in parallel, rather than sequentially.<\/p>\n
He said: “Offaly have had the highest return of landowners singing up…Offaly also sees the advantages of having a treated water spine through their county.”<\/p>\n
Mike Healy from Uisce \u00c9ireann said their premise for Lough Derg is that there won’t be change in water levels there, or in the Parteen Basin, so there would not be compensation for neigbouring areas.<\/p>\n
“We do not see a change to the leisure users or fishermen on Parteen Basin or Lough Derg,” he said<\/p>\n
He said their calculations have been independently reviewed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demand for water in the Greater Dublin area is so high, that it cannot be met without taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-517086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517086","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=517086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}