A bitter environmental row has resurfaced in Galway city after confirmation that the controversial sewage treatment plant at Mutton Island is almost out of date already, less than a year after it was opened.
The €70 million plant is working close to peak capacity and will have to be extended within the next two years, according to an engineers' report prepared for Galway city and county councillors.
An additional plant will also have to be built on the east side of the bay, near Oranmore, or inland near Athenry, to cope with this growing commuter belt, councillors have been informed.
The Mutton Island plant was built, after a protracted row over its location, without EU funds. Opponents had argued in favour of a more discreet location at the former isolation hospital on the edge of Lough Atalia in the city's docks area.
In October, 1995 the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, accepted the view that the location in a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) would have a major negative environmental impact and withdrew approval for EU funding which would have covered 85 per cent of the cost.
Mr Brendan Howlin, at the time the Labour environment minister, decided to proceed with the Mutton Island site regardless, at an estimated cost to the State then of £23 million.
In February, 1996 Galway City Council sought tenders to construct the waste-disposal plant and causeway to the island, and Mr Ray McBride of the Save Galway Bay Group went to court seeking an order to quash this.
However, the order was refused by the High Court, and Mr McBride then appealed to the Supreme Court. On March 24th, 1998, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and awarded costs to the city council.
The plant was to have lasted until 2017, with a "people-equivalent" waste capacity of 91,000. This included 10,000 in the county areas of Oranmore and Barna, leaving 81,000 for the city area.
A Green Party councillor, Mr Niall Ó Brolcháin, who has already analysed figures given to councillors by consulting engineers, said that city areas like Nun's Island were still not connected to the plant.
Other housing and industrial projects, including development of the Ardaun corridor on the city's eastern flanks, would also pose additional demands.
"The consultants have admitted that no one could have predicted the growth accompanying the Celtic Tiger, but it begs the question as to whether the current rapid pace of development in Galway can continue without adequate sewerage.
"No one wants to see sewage being pumped directly into the bay again," commented Cllr Ó Brolcháin.
Mr Derrick Hambleton, former secretary of the Save Galway Bay Group, said he was not surprised at the development.
His group had warned about the lack of capacity for expansion for the proposed plant, and this had been backed up in a report which it had commissioned from L.G. Mouchel and Partners, consulting engineers, which was published in January 1994.
The group had always campaigned on grounds of inappropriate location, lack of capacity for expansion, and the need for tertiary treatment and had never been opposed to sewage treatment for Galway, Mr Hambleton stressed.
The Fine Gael deputy mayor of Galway, Cllr Padraic Conneely, said he hoped the necessary expansion would not be met with "the same level of delays, shenanigans and objections as happened 10 years ago".