A SPECIAL meeting of Limerick City and County Council over plans to extract over 300 million litres of water a day from the River Shannon to Dublin will take place next week.
The meeting, in relation to the proposed Water Supply Project for the Eastern and Midlands Region, will be held on Wednesday March 4 in the Council Chamber in Dooradoyle.
It comes after calls were made for Limerick Council to lodge a formal objection to the Shannon drainage plans, with Tipperary and Clare councils to lodge their own objections on the grounds that the plans will cause “major ecological damage to wildlife and fish on Lough Derg”.
Speaking to the Limerick Post, a spokeswoman for Limerick Council said “the planning department will be holding a workshop in early March with elected members. This will be followed by a special meeting in the week after same.”
A special meeting to discuss the same matter was requested in January by Aontú councillor Sarah Beasley, who said she secured support from other councillors to address “growing concerns” around the proposal.
The issue was due to be discussed at a meeting earlier this month, but was postponed until March.
The public have until February 25 to have their say on the project, while local authorities are working to a deadline of the end of March.
“While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are consumed with their battle against Mayor John Moran, Dublin is quietly moving to extract our water from the Shannon — and Limerick is falling behind Tipperary and Clare in opposing it,” Cllr Beasley hit out.
“The clock is ticking and our councillors are looking the wrong way. This pipeline poses a serious environmental threat to the River Shannon, to our city and county, and we cannot afford to let political point-scoring cost us our water.”
Plans for the 172km steel pipeline were submitted last December from the River Shannon at the Parteen Basin near Lough Derg on to the Midlands Eastern and Greater Dublin area.
The site of the abstraction at the Parteen basin in the Lower Shannon is an EU-designated conservation area.
Last week the River Shannon Protection Alliance group held a meeting in Limerick on the issue, where it was heard the project it “not necessary” and claims were echoed that the plan “will damage water flows to Limerick and major ecological damage to Lough Derg and the River Shannon”.
The group also claimed that Dublin is currently losing up to 50 per cent of its water because of “leaking Victorian pipes”, the fixing of which, in their view, would prevent the need for draining the Shannon in the first place.