Waterford Beaches are a bit sh!t (literally)

Harry Palmr

The er more brown the colour the worse the condition. We don;t have any that are considered worth avoiding on health grounds but a couple of them are marginal. Given Boatstrand is so isolated you'd have to wonder what is generating the nasty matter to give it a lowish rating.

Deiseen

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The er more brown the colour the worse the condition. We don;t have any that are considered worth avoiding on health grounds but a couple of them are marginal. Given Boatstrand is so isolated you'd have to wonder what is generating the nasty matter to give it a lowish rating.

Poor sewage treatment and/or rivers flowing into the area also affected by poor sewage treatment.

Johnboy1951

Got a link to that map? Thanks

gctest50

Deiseen wrote: »

Poor sewage treatment and/or rivers flowing into the area also affected by poor sewage treatment.

Poor ? none :

Just raw sewage being dumped in

You wouldn't want to go there for a break and have your kids swimming in that

They may as well stay at home and swim lengths of the septic tank

The Green Party’s Grace O’Sullivan says it shows there is a raw sewerage problem in the southeast.

“One of the things that shocked me most is that the deadline to comply with EU directive standards was 2005. This is now 2017, so we’re way behind in Ireland. What shocked me was raw sewerage still being discharged into rivers and seas, Duncannon, Ballyhack, Arthurstown, Kilmore Quay.

Harry Palmr

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Got a link to that map? Thanks

Article here

http://www.thejournal.ie/beaches-4014697-May2018/

Johnboy1951

Nice to see my fav beach is green ....... Woodstown.

dzilla

Sure what do you expect the ars3hole of ireland.

taytobreath

Tramore is excellant

extrapolate

I was at Woodstown beach there on April 3rd and there were signs up at the entrance warning people not to go into the water for health and safety reasons. Surprised to see it's green on the map?

Johnboy1951

extrapolate wrote: »

I was at Woodstown beach there on April 3rd and there were signs up at the entrance warning people not to go into the water for health and safety reasons. Surprised to see it's green on the map?

Wonder if that was caused by 'an event' ...... be interesting to know what that might have been.

extrapolate

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Wonder if that was caused by 'an event' ...... be interesting to know what that might have been.

Well, I was there today and the signs are still up! Don't know why that article has it marked green. Odd.

dk1982

Great to see my local beach Annestown given an excellent rating. Now if only all the lovely town folk could take their filthy rubbish home with them after spending the day enjoying the facilities that would be great. Wont happen though

azimuth17

The title of this thread is unfair to those Waterford beaches with good water quality.

BBM77

This thread is sh!t literally

An_Toirpin

Given the water charge protests it is clear Irish people do not have the will to improve water quality.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Given the water charge protests it is clear Irish people do not have the will to improve water quality.

i think those protests were a lot more than just water, i think it was more of a reaction of enough was enough with austerity measures

Deiseen

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Given the water charge protests it is clear Irish people do not have the will to improve water quality.

i think those protests were a lot more than just water, i think it was more of a reaction of enough was enough with austerity measures

100% agree with you on this. It was the straw that broke the camels back!

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Given the water charge protests it is clear Irish people do not have the will to improve water quality.

i think those protests were a lot more than just water, i think it was more of a reaction of enough was enough with austerity measures

The two (water charges and water infrastructure) are totally linked. Maybe in the popular media it was fighting austerity but politicians wanted them for the sake of our infrastructure and Right2Water are directly to blame for the recent lack of investment.

Johnboy1951

An_Toirpin wrote: »

The two (water charges and water infrastructure) are totally linked. Maybe in the popular media it was fighting austerity but politicians wanted them for the sake of our infrastructure and Right2Water are directly to blame for the recent lack of investment.

There has been a lack of investment for decades, not just recently ........ Right2Water or any other group were not responsible for that.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

The two (water charges and water infrastructure) are totally linked. Maybe in the popular media it was fighting austerity but politicians wanted them for the sake of our infrastructure and Right2Water are directly to blame for the recent lack of investment.

My own opinions on this are simply that, I've researched a lot into the dangers of austerity measures, and there's plenty of evidence to show, they actually have little or no positive effects on a society, in fact they cause more harm than good, mark Blyth has done some great work on this. I do agree though, our water infrastructure does indeed require large investment, but I also do suspect there has been an element of de-investment in our public infrastructures for many years now, probably due to the workings of neoliberial thinking. Blaming activist groups for this is ridiculous, many well respected social, political and economic commentators have been explaining this for years

An_Toirpin

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote: »

The two (water charges and water infrastructure) are totally linked. Maybe in the popular media it was fighting austerity but politicians wanted them for the sake of our infrastructure and Right2Water are directly to blame for the recent lack of investment.

There has been a lack of investment for decades, not just recently ........  Right2Water or any other group were not responsible for that.

The reason there was no investment historically was that water use was not tied to revenue collection. Right2Water are directly responsible for stopping a very noble attempt by FG/Lab to change that situation.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

The reason there was no investment historically was that water use was not tied to revenue collection. Right2Water are directly responsible for stopping a very noble attempt by FG/Lab to change that situation.

The continual taxation of the individual to provide us with all our social needs is unsustainable, as it is causing great inequalities, amongst other things, we must find ways of taxing great wealth, including capital, in order to move forward

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote:

The reason there was no investment historically was that water use was not tied to revenue collection. Right2Water are directly responsible for stopping a very noble attempt by FG/Lab to change that situation.

The continual taxation of the individual to provide us with all our social needs is unsustainable, as it is causing great inequalities, amongst other things, we must find ways of taxing great wealth, including capital, in order to move forward

Well taxing people things such as water on what they need is perfectly sustainable in the vast majority of OCED countries with water charges. In the Irish case, social transfers actually extremely progressive and I dont know what you mean by great wealth? Wealth taxes might make sense in Silicon Valley but they don't in Waterford where is there extremely little super rich.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

Well taxing people things such as water on what they need is perfectly sustainable in the vast majority of OCED countries with water charges. In the Irish case, social transfers actually extremely progressive and I dont know what you mean by great wealth? Wealth taxes might make sense in Silicon Valley but they don't in Waterford where is there extremely little super rich.

It's important to realise where the majority of our wealth is nowadays, it is in fact in bank accounts, probably in tax havens around the world, but these bank accounts are not owned by individuals but by institutions, including financial institutions, i.e. banks, but also in the accounts of large corporations etc. Now many of these institutions and corporations do in fact operate here in Waterford. There's increasing evidence to support growing inequality, Joe stigliz and Thomas piketty have done some exceptional work on this. Again, the continual taxation of the individual, to provide us with all our social needs is unsustainable and far from progressive, we must find ways of distributing wealth more evenly, we must start effectively taxing capital more so than the individual to do this

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote:

Well taxing people things such as water on what they need is perfectly sustainable in the vast majority of OCED countries with water charges. In the Irish case, social transfers actually extremely progressive and I dont know what you mean by great wealth? Wealth taxes might make sense in Silicon Valley but they don't in Waterford where is there extremely little super rich.

It's important to realise where the majority of our wealth is nowadays, it is in fact in bank accounts, probably in tax havens around the world, but these bank accounts are not owned by individuals but by institutions, including financial institutions, i.e. banks, but also in the accounts of large corporations etc. Now many of these institutions and corporations do in fact operate here in Waterford. There's increasing evidence to support growing inequality, Joe stigliz and Thomas piketty have done some exceptional work on this. Again, the continual taxation of the individual, to provide us with all our social needs is unsustainable and far from progressive, we must find ways of distributing wealth more evenly, we must start effectively taxing capital more so than the individual to do this

The idea of of wealth taxes is to control excessive inequality. It not for the provision of scare resources like treated water. Pretty much every country has accepted water charges as it allows reliable funding of water infrastructure at a fair and affordable cost to the consumer.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

The idea of of wealth taxes is to control excessive inequality. It not for the provision of scare resources like treated water. Pretty much every country has accepted water charges as it allows reliable funding of water infrastructure at a fair and affordable cost to the consumer.

And again, there's increasing evidence to support the failures of taxing wealth to help us create the infrastructures we require to succeed as a society, and an increase in taxing labour to try do this, this is in fact, unsustainable. We should probably conduct in highly successful approaches such as the creation of a 'sovereign wealth fund' to try compensate for these short comings, before trying to tax individuals further, even though charging the individual would probably have positive effects on reducing water use, but that would probably be political suicide in Ireland at the moment.

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote:

The idea of of wealth taxes is to control excessive inequality. It not for the provision of scare resources like treated water. Pretty much every country has accepted water charges as it allows reliable funding of water infrastructure at a fair and affordable cost to the consumer.

And again, there's increasing evidence to support the failures of taxing wealth to help us create the infrastructures we require to succeed as a society, and an increase in taxing labour to try do this, this is in fact, unsustainable. We should probably conduct in highly successful approaches such as the creation of a 'sovereign wealth fund' to try compensate for these short comings, before trying to tax individuals further, even though charging the individual would probably have positive effects on reducing water use, but that would probably be political suicide in Ireland at the moment.

Middle income people have relatively low taxes here compared to OCED peers while low income workers have very low taxes. Irish people don't seem to appreciate in Nordic countries and Germany low income workers pay far more tax so it is crazy to say Irish people are paying unsustainable amounts of tax. A wealth tax or high corporation tax might raise revenue but it wont do anything to stop the vast amounts of water waste and doesn't funnel revenue to water renovation. Heck we don't need to look far to see the truth here. Look at the plastic bag levy and how extraordinary successful even a trivial consumption tax was for reducing use.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Middle income people have relatively low taxes here compared to OCED peers while low income workers have very low taxes. Irish people don't seem to appreciate in Nordic countries and Germany low income workers pay far more tax so it is crazy to say Irish people are paying unsustainable amounts of tax. A wealth tax or high corporation tax might raise revenue but it wont do anything to stop the vast amounts of water waste and doesn't funnel revenue to water renovation. Heck we don't need to look far to see the truth here. Look at the plastic bag levy and how extraordinary successful even a trivial consumption tax was for reducing use.

you re failing to see the bigger picture here, large accumulations of wealth are occurring, we must find workable methods of 'taxing' this wealth in order to fund our public infrastructures. if you are affiliated to a political party, recommend them to introduce water charges, and watch what will happen to that party, its political suicide in ireland at the moment. the approach of taxing labour more so than capital is unsustainable. yes, a water charge would probably reduce the usage of water but as explained before, we must also look towards other methods of funding critical infrastructure.

Kracken

I think the biggest miss here is that water in other countries is privatised, therefore a profit is required to make it work. Profit therefore means that you will have to cost save is revenue is down. The cheapest parts and labour will be sought and the effectiveness drops of installation and so on. That was evident when the likes of Accenture were hired to consult for Irish water, it was to bring a model in for privatisation online and transfers over the current system.

We in the past have never spent the money required to maintain the system, but that is the issue with social schemes they get defunded with with every government regardless the party. Where in reality it needs to be legislated to having a set amount being set aside per term to maintain the system for maintenance, growth, supply and quality.

Wanderer78

Kracken wrote: »

I think the biggest miss here is that water in other countries is privatised, therefore a profit is required to make it work. Profit therefore means that you will have to cost save is revenue is down. The cheapest parts and labour will be sought and the effectiveness drops of installation and so on. That was evident when the likes of Accenture were hired to consult for Irish water, it was to bring a model in for privatisation online and transfers over the current system.

We in the past have never spent the money required to maintain the system, but that is the issue with social schemes they get defunded with with every government regardless the party. Where in reality it needs to be legislated to having a set amount being set aside per term to maintain the system for maintenance, growth, supply and quality.

completely agree, and i think this showed in the protests as well, many people realised this. theres mounting evidence to show that privatising critical public infrastructures ultimately fails for the reasons in which you ve explained, its interesting to see a small section of the british rail system being recently re-nationalised.

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Middle income people have relatively low taxes here compared to OCED peers while low income workers have very low taxes. Irish people don't seem to appreciate in Nordic countries and Germany low income workers pay far more tax so it is crazy to say Irish people are paying unsustainable amounts of tax. A wealth tax or high corporation tax might raise revenue but it wont do anything to stop the vast amounts of water waste and doesn't funnel revenue to water renovation. Heck we don't need to look far to see the truth here. Look at the plastic bag levy and how extraordinary successful even a trivial consumption tax was for reducing use.

you re failing to see the bigger picture here, large accumulations of wealth are occurring, we must find workable methods of 'taxing' this wealth in order to fund our public infrastructures. if you are affiliated to a political party, recommend them to introduce water charges, and watch what will happen to that party, its political suicide in ireland at the moment. the approach of taxing labour more so than capital is unsustainable. yes, a water charge would probably reduce the usage of water but as explained before, we must also look towards other methods of funding critical infrastructure.

You are right, It would be political suicide, but largely due to the toxic efforts efforts of Right2Water.  It is absurd to say taxing labour is unsustainable in this country as most peer countries have higher labour taxes. Water charges wouldn't even be a labour tax, it is  consumption tax. Water charges help the poor as they no longer have to subsidize water waste.

An_Toirpin

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Kracken wrote: »

I think the biggest miss here is that water in other countries is privatised, therefore a profit is required to make it work. Profit therefore means that you will have to cost save is revenue is down. The cheapest parts and labour will be sought and the effectiveness drops of installation and so on. That was evident when the likes of Accenture were hired to consult for Irish water, it was to bring a model in for privatisation online and transfers over the current system.

We in the past have never spent the money required to maintain the system, but that is the issue with social schemes they get defunded with with every government regardless the party. Where in reality it needs to be legislated to having a set amount being set aside per term to maintain the system for maintenance, growth, supply and quality.

completely agree, and i think this showed in the protests as well, many people realised this. theres mounting evidence to show that privatising critical public infrastructures ultimately fails for the reasons in which you ve explained, its interesting to see a small section of the british rail system being recently re-nationalised.

Irish Water did not amount of water privatisation but lets say it did. Is privatisation so bad? Our new incredible motorway system is an example of such privatisation of critical infrastructure and I would say it was a huge success. If it was public only it would have never been built. Public ownership of water infrastructure has been a unmitigated disaster since the abolition of water charges in 1979. But I don't care who owns it as long er you pay for what you use. The success of the anti water charges campaign was a sad example of public hysteria trumping over well established facts.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

You are right, It would be political suicide, but largely due to the toxic efforts efforts of Right2Water. It is absurd to say taxing labour is unsustainable in this country as most peer countries have higher labour taxes. Water charges wouldn't even be a labour tax, it is consumption tax. Water charges help the poor as they no longer have to subsidize water waste.

Oh dear, please tell me you're not affiliated with a political party, we truly need to move on from this dangerous and regressive thinking. There are many well respected social, political and economic commentators explaining in great detail how taxation has been moving from capital towards things such as labour for decades now, this process is slowly failing. You will find all workers are in fact consumers of water, and most people, are in fact workers, and charging for the consumption of water is an indirect method of a labour tax, even though as discussed, would of course probably mean a reduction in consumption if introduced. Again, we need to find ways of taxing 'capital' to fund our critical infrastructures, but of course the taxation of labour must also play it's part, but currently this is uneven, and dangerously uneven.

Johnboy1951

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Irish Water did not amount of water privatisation but lets say it did. Is privatisation so bad? Our new incredible motorway system is an example of such privatisation of critical infrastructure and I would say it was a huge success. If it was public only it would have never been built. Public ownership of water infrastructure has been a unmitigated disaster since the abolition of water charges in 1979. But I don't care who owns it as long er you pay for what you use. The success of the anti water charges campaign was a sad example of public hysteria trumping over well established facts.

Privatisation of any critical infrastructure is always a bad thing! Terrible!
To realise this all you have to do is consider what would be the ONLY purpose of such a company ........ to enhance the income/wealth of the shareholders.
In public ownership, the purpose is to be of benefit to society.

My personal objection to the water meters was that they were there to meter the low-hanging fruit with no information published to back up the claims of individuals wasting water in any great numbers.

In fact it turned out that the major leaks were due to deteriorating infrastructure long before the pipes got anywhere close to individual homes.
~50% of the treated water was wasted before it could be used by anyone !!!!!!

Yeah, a real good idea that!


What all this has to do with the subject title is beyond me.

Poor Uncle Tom

It's typical, a thread on beach ratings has degenerated into a bickering match on protests and water charges.

azimuth17

A very badly named thread has disintegrated into waffle.

An_Toirpin

Our beaches are not going to clean themselves. The current system does not work.

Poor Uncle Tom

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Our beaches are not going to clean themselves. The current system does not work.

What exactly are you calling the current system?

If we take two points in time, 20 years ago and today and see what has changed.

Relevant farm practices, 20 years ago it was common to pump pasture lands with chemical nitrates and urea to turbo charge the production of grasses and crops leading to over use and leaching of these chemicals into our waterways. With the REPS programmes and the Nitrates Directive in the intervening years, farm practices today are far more organic and cleaner for the environment with less chemicals and more natural manures being used.

One off houses and septic tanks, 20 years ago one off houses were loosely tied to installing septic tank systems in compliance with SR6 1991 and generally were constructed to a very poor standard as the installation of those systems were left in the applicants hands totally. Today the treatment of effluents from a one-off house are based on a specific site suitability assessment and any planning permission has a very onerous condition requiring certification, pictures and material receipts to be forwarded and maintenance records to be kept for inspection with a range of possible fines capable of being imposed for non compliance.

Housing developments and towns sewerage systems. I think we can agree that these were in a very poor condition 20 years ago, but in the meantime a lot of upgrading works have been carried out. The new treatment system for Dungarvan at the Quigley Magnasite site in Ballinacourty comes to mind, as well as the recent commissioning of the Ardmore Treatment System leading to their first Blue Beach Flag this week in over 20 years. The sewerage systems throughout the county are being upgraded on a continual basis and it will take time but things are getting better.

Commercial and Industrial Developments. It's safe to say that 20 years ago any of these large industrial developments (probably without exception) were polluting to some degree. Today the licensing of wastes production and off site movement of wastes are handled by the EPA and not the Local Authorities anymore. The EC Directives under which these licenses are obtained are very onerous on the Industries involved and the penalties for non compliance are severe.

And all of this in the face of continual development over the 20 year period of farms, commercial and industrial developments, housing developments and one-off house developments. I think the "current situation" is working and working well as each of the offending areas are being tackled at root source and progress is being made and more importantly progress is continual.

An_Toirpin

Poor Uncle Tom wrote: »

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Our beaches are not going to clean themselves. The current system does not work.

What exactly are you calling the current system?

If we take two points in time, 20 years ago and today and see what has changed.

Relevant farm practices, 20 years ago it was common to pump pasture lands with chemical nitrates and urea to turbo charge the production of grasses and crops leading to over use and leaching of these chemicals into our waterways. With the REPS programmes and the Nitrates Directive in the intervening years, farm practices today are far more organic and cleaner for the environment with less chemicals and more natural manures being used.

One off houses and septic tanks, 20 years ago one off houses were loosely tied to installing septic tank systems in compliance with SR6 1991 and generally were constructed to a very poor standard as the installation of those systems were left in the applicants hands totally. Today the treatment of effluents from a one-off house are based on a specific site suitability assessment and any planning permission has a very onerous condition requiring certification, pictures and material receipts to be forwarded and maintenance records to be kept for inspection with a range of possible fines capable of being imposed for non compliance.

Housing developments and towns sewerage systems. I think we can agree that these were in a very poor condition 20 years ago, but in the meantime a lot of upgrading works have been carried out. The new treatment system for Dungarvan at the Quigley Magnasite site in Ballinacourty comes to mind, as well as the recent commissioning of the Ardmore Treatment System leading to their first Blue Beach Flag this week in over 20 years. The sewerage systems throughout the county are being upgraded on a continual basis and it will take time but things are getting better.

Commercial and Industrial Developments. It's safe to say that 20 years ago any of these large industrial developments (probably without exception) were polluting to some degree. Today the licensing of wastes production and off site movement of wastes are handled by the EPA and not the Local Authorities anymore. The EC Directives under which these licenses are obtained are very onerous on the Industries involved and the penalties for non compliance are severe.

And all of this in the face of continual development over the 20 year period of farms, commercial and industrial developments, housing developments and one-off house developments. I think the "current situation" is working and working well as each of the offending areas are being tackled at root source and progress is being made and more importantly progress is continual.

There are some improvements but it is a less rosy picture than you paint. For example I don't see any resurgence in pearl mussel numbers. You mention septic tank inspection. Yes that is surely helping but the rate is inspection is painfully low and non complication is extremely unlikely to be noticed. Onerous fines on paper doen't mean much if people feel they will never get caught. The main areas where there has ben progress is where the system ensures the polluter pays and that is is what I have been stressing all along on this thread.

Poor Uncle Tom

An_Toirpin wrote: »

There are some improvements but it is a less rosy picture than you paint. For example I don't see any resurgence in pearl mussel numbers.

Nature is a wonderous force, all it takes to reach full health is time and while patience is not a virtue you seem to embrace, in environmental terms the healing is underway even now. Given that the life span of a pearl mussel is between 86 and 102 years the regrowth of pearl mussel numbers can never be referred to as a resurgence, unless there's a nuclear element involved and we have worse things to ponder if that ever happens!

An_Toirpin wrote: »

You mention septic tank inspection. Yes that is surely helping but the rate is inspection is painfully low and non complication is extremely unlikely to be noticed.

Actually I don't mention septic tank inspection, I mention the keeping of contractual paperwork and evidence for inspection purposes. You seem to be mixing up the 'septic tank inspections' introduced by Phil Hogan to generate government funds through another stealth tax, which lost momentum when he was called out on it and it died a death. The older septic tank systems are being upgraded on a continual basis by the owners when the properties are being developed which happens all the time. Again over time all the systems will be upgraded to comply with current regulations.

An_Toirpin wrote: »

Onerous fines on paper doen't mean much if people feel they will never get caught. The main areas where there has ben progress is where the system ensures the polluter pays and that is is what I have been stressing all along on this thread.

You seem to be missing the point that the polluter cant pay if the legislation is not in place to fine him/her to begin with!

You really need to take a step back and smell the roses, take a nice walk along a beach or a riparian stroll may be in order, embrace nature on a local level she's far healthier now than she was 20 years ago.

Wanderer78

An_Toirpin wrote:

There are some improvements but it is a less rosy picture than you paint. For example I don't see any resurgence in pearl mussel numbers. You mention septic tank inspection. Yes that is surely helping but the rate is inspection is painfully low and non complication is extremely unlikely to be noticed. Onerous fines on paper doen't mean much if people feel they will never get caught. The main areas where there has ben progress is where the system ensures the polluter pays and that is is what I have been stressing all along on this thread.

'the polluter pays' has serious and fundamental flaws, even though it is a very good idea, it cannot, and should not be solely relied upon to solve our environmental issues, as it heavily relies upon the individual to solve these issues, and in many cases, the individual is not the true polluter, but in fact is only a partial entity, and in some cases, plays no part in creating the pollution.