Cork council accused of clogging harbour with seaweed

Cork County Council was yesterday strongly criticised over its efforts to clean up seaweed from one of the country's top "blue flag" beaches with the council being accused of dumping the weed so that it ended up clogging up a local harbour.

According to Tony Walsh who lives at Ardgehane, Clonakilty, Cork County Council's attempts to remove seaweed from Inchydoney beach have resulted in parts of Clonakilty harbour being clogged up with the weed.

Walsh explained that Cork County Council hired a private contractor to remove the weed from Inchydoney beach on August 16th, but the contractor dumped the weed at the eastern end of the beach into the incoming tide at the entrance to Clonakilty harbour.

The result was that the weed was washed into the harbour with the 150m-long estuary at Ring being completely carpeted with weed and local fishermen having to remove crustaceans that they had caught and were storing in cages because of fears of oxygen deprivation.

"The lack of common sense in taking this action was even more apparent when, with each tide, a lot of the weed returned to the beach, necessitating another clean-up on August 23rd when the contractor did exactly the same thing and the weed was again washed in," he said.

"This unbelievable action by the authority charged with protecting our environment has led to smells, given the heaps of rotting weed on the foreshore, has damaged moorings given the excessive weight of mats of weed and has resulted in damage to boat engines," he said.

"The irony of this is that had a member of the public been caught dumping rubbish into the harbour, or say a farmer caught washing his slurry tanker into the sea, they would rightly have been prosecuted and yet the local authority can do this without any sanction."

According to a county council spokesman, the council hired a private contractor to remove the weed from Inchydoney beach on August 16th but because there was just "a small window with the tides", the weed was dumped immediately to be carried back out to sea.

"It's been the custom and practice of the council to dispose of sea lettuce and other weed collected from beaches by dumping it back out to sea for both reasons of logistics and economics - using landfill to dispose of large quantities of weed would be very expensive."

According to the council spokesman, the contractor spent some 13 hours over two days using two JCBs to collect and remove the weed from Inchydoney beach and the council expects the weed to dissipate from Clonakilty harbour and be washed out to sea over the coming weeks.