Published: Wednesday, 16th September, 2009 5:00pm

Kingscourt water treatment plant malfunctioned

Cavan County Council was fined €500 and ordered to pay €4,000 costs at Bailieboro District Court for allowing polluted material to escape from a waste water treatment plant near the River Cormey at Kingscourt. The prosecution was brought by the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board.

Judge Sean MacBride convicted the council in respect of a pollution summons which alleged that on February 22, 2009, it failed to provide or maintain such means as would effectively prevent the passage into the river known as the Cormey or Rectory River, a tributary of the Lagan river, which in turn is a tributary of the river Glyde or Corgarry, Kingscourt.

Liam Keane, solicitor prosecuting, said that what happened on February 22, 2009 was that at Corgarry, Mr. Greene, a fisheries officer with the Eastern Fisheries Board, received a report and went to the scene, a river which has two names, the Cormey or Rectory, and is a tributary of the Lagan river, which in turn is a tributary of the river Glyde.

The Lagan river is a salmon river and Mr. Greene and another fisheries officer Ms Corrane took a number of samples from the waters where there was evident pollution. The identified the source of the pollution as a waste water treatment plant which was under the control of Cavan County Council and there was an obvious smell. "In fairness to the council there was no evidence of a fish kill", said Mr. Keane.

Both fisheries officers spoke to representatives of Cavan County Council and the caretaker there, and his superiors took immediate steps to remedy the situation.

Mr. Keane said the cause of the discharge appears to have been a timer valve which controls the pumping system, which had failed. It is agreed that is what caused the pollution.

The samples were subsequently analysed in Dublin and he had in the results in court. Responding to the judge, Mr. Keane agreed that they were greatly in excess of the limits.

Asked by Judge Sean what the council had done to alleviate the matter and bring the water back to its previous state, Mr. Keane explained "that the pollution has effectively worked its way through".

Mr. Keane said there was a more long-term problem with this plant, which relates to its capacity to deal with the amount of sewerage it has to treat - that is an ongoing problem.

"The Fisheries Board accept that steps appear to have been taken in relation to advertising for tenders with a view to upgrading the system," he said. He also pointed out that there is an concern that this facility needs to be upgraded, or there could be serious consequences.

Jacqueline Maloney, solicitor for Cavan County Council, said the council was coming before the court with hands up. She pointed out that this incident happened at the Kingscourt Waste Water treatment plant. The council has a situation in place where the caretaker visits the plant every morning, seven days a week.

On the morning in question he visited as normal and took the meter levels and readings; everything was fine and in operation. But something happened during the course of that day and when the fisheries personnel alerted the council on the evening of February 22 that something was wrong, the caretaker went to the plant in response to this emergency call out and he took immediate remedial action.

She explained that there is a primary settlement tank at the facility and a value on the tank is set to open for 10 minutes, every two hours. Effectively there is a de-sludging from this primary settlement tank into a sludge holding tank.

What happened on this occasion what that the value malfunctioned and stayed in the open position, so the sludge continued to go into the holding tank, which overflowed and ended up in the water.

Ms Maloney told Judge MacBride that it had been resolved - it had never happened before that and it has not happened since. She also pointed out that there are two pumps on the system: one malfunctioned and the other one could not cope with the demand, as the overflow was so great.

The caretaker took two immediate actions when he arrived; first he manually closed the valve which stopped the heavy flow going through, and he turned the outflow from the storm tanks into a reed bed, to provide some form of secondary treatment, before it got to the water.

The following day engineering personnel visited the plant and found that one of the pumps was blocked and that had caused it to trip, and that matter was resolved.

"The immediate remedial action which was taken thereafter to try to make sure would not happen again, unless and until there is a new plant put in place, is that the caretaker is not only going every morning to the plant, but he is also visiting it every afternoon, seven days a week," said Ms Maloney.

Judge MacBride then wanted to know what stage the process to put a new plant in place was at. Was it at the tender stage or had it been approved for funding?

Vincent Craig, engineer with Cavan County Council, told the judge that the plans for a new plant were going through a design, build and operate scheme and they were in the process of inviting tenders.

When tenders are approved it is over to the Department for funding.

The tenders list was coming in at present and the selected tenders will be recommended to the department; he expected that to be done this year and the funding approval process will commence after that.