You wait for a bus...!

They say ‘you wait for a bus and then two come along together’. Following hard on the heels of the ‘Climate Change Coalition’ (CCC) comes this:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm…

The CCC want to save the planet the Irish Sea Centre (ISC) objective is more modest simply the ecosystem of the Irish Sea. I’m one hundred percent with them.

I’ve been chuntering on about the Irish Sea since the seventies when Sellafield was merrily pouring radioactive waste into it. Meanwhile over on the Mersey chemical and heavy metal pollution, some modern some historic, was pouring in. Then just as we thought it couldn’t get worse we found the Brits had dumped a staggering 1 million tonnes of munitions and commercial waste in Beaufort Dyke (you read that right).

I was on the stump ‘ranting’ at conferences from Skibbereen to Ballycastle taking in Dublin and Liverpool on the way.

Radiation discharges to the marine environment have been cut back sharply despite the hiatus with Technetium 99 in the late 1980s and a lot of sewage discharges are now also abated.

However Commercial interests still see the Irish sea as a convenient ‘out of sight out of mind’ disposal location.

The biggest event currently disturbing the tranquility of our marine environment is the Alexandra Quay project in Dublin which is seeing thousands of cubic metres of dredged material some toxic dumped in the South central Irish Sea.

Only last year the Irish Underwater Council (IUC) had to advise that dives of Dublin in the Bay and offshore Islands were suspended. Dredging the IUC said had left the waters of Dublin Bay “filthy brown, somewhere between dark chocolate and milk chocolate” the Port project immediately denied they were responsible despite advancing no reason why a phenomenon one diver said had left lobsters and crabs with “an overcoat of silt on their backs” was occurring!

In total the Alexandra Quay project will see 9.7 million tonnes of dredged spoil deposited in the Irish Sea over several years. This so giant Cruise Liners can access the ‘Fair City’. The IUC opposed it in the courts not least because part of the dump site is in a designated Special Area of Conservation. It went ahead anyway.

The Irish Underwater Council, representing some 2,000 divers, said its members had to cancel all planned dives in Dublin Bay this year. It said the use of the older dumping permit to extend the dredging season was technically “legal, but hardly correct”.

It's not just gigantic projects like the Dublin scheme either. Recently Warrenpoint Port Authority wanted to dump dredgings in Carlingford Lough but backed down when fears were raised about radiation levels in the spoil. However they said they would dump it where they always had - you guessed it - further out in the Irish Sea.

It's a bit late in life for me to be campaigning but I wish the new Irish Sea Centre well… there’s still a job of work to get commercial interests to accept the sea is not the dumping ground it's our environment.

Here are some related links:

https://www.irishtimes.com/…/lobsters-and-crabs-walking-aro…

https://afloat.ie/…/39182-dredging-making-dublin-bay-too-mu…

https://www.irishtimes.com/…/divers-to-challenge-dublin-bay…

Image: Dublin dredging started last year and will continue for several more. 9.7 million tonnes of dredged spoil is destined for the Irish Sea

Bernard Moffatt