{"id":650516,"date":"2026-10-10T11:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/650516\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T11:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:34:07","slug":"the-river-slaney-needs-to-be-protected-not-dredged-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/650516\/","title":{"rendered":"The river Slaney needs to be protected, not dredged \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 The river Slaney is a stunning natural wonder. It is also a special area of conservation, supporting abundant wildlife. Unfortunately, it is a river on the brink, and in a generation we could lose salmon and it may already be too late for the freshwater pearl mussel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">We need to move away from the shortsighted messaging that to dredge, straighten and engineer our rivers will solve all our problems. We must let our rivers be exactly what they should be \u2013 natural wild places.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dredging 200m of a special area of conservation would be utterly pointless \u2013 it will simply refill with materials and water during the next significant flood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">As the old saying goes: \u201cNo river reaches the sea without first making peace with the rocks in its path.\u201d Don\u2019t dredge it, protect it. \u2013 Yours, etc, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">JONO HUGHES,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Chairperson, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Enniscorthy Tidy Towns. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A chara, \u2013 David Doran advocates for dredging as a solution to flooding (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/letters\/2026\/10\/07\/enniscorthy-river-blockages-contributing-to-flooding\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/letters\/2026\/10\/07\/enniscorthy-river-blockages-contributing-to-flooding\/\">Letters<\/a>, October 7th). While dredging rivers may provide short-term relief locally, it ignores river behaviour and is a simplistic solution to a complex issue. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Rivers are dynamic systems that naturally transport sediment and will actively fill sediment deficits when material is removed. Dredged channels frequently silt back up \u2013 sometimes within weeks or months \u2013 making for a costly, repetitive and unsustainable maintenance cycle. Moreover, by deepening the channel and clearing \u201cblockages\u201d, dredging speeds up the velocity of water flow. This reduces lag time and can significantly worsen flood peaks further downstream by dumping larger volumes of water into communities faster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Islands, gravel bars, vegetation or other features found in rivers are natural manifestations. These features also provide habitat for river species that are constantly under pressure from human activities, not least from dredging. We dredge or \u201cclean\u201d gutters but it is no way to treat a river or its inhabitants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">While I have every sympathy for those who suffer from the impacts of flooding, people do not live \u201cabove a river\u201d. Rather they are living on the river floodplain. Floodplains naturally hold vastly more water than the river channel itself, rendering dredging ineffective during heavy flooding. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">With ever worsening flooding caused by climate change, a longer-term approach is to allow fields to flood rather than towns downstream and consider a strategic retreat where we cannot. \u2013 Is mise,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">R \u00d3 BRIAIN, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Phibsborough, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 The river Slaney is a stunning natural wonder. It is also a special area of conservation,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[2885,246,849,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-650516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-floods","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650516","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=650516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}