Disagreement over Fingal sewerage plan

There is apparent uncertainty over who will make the decisions about proposed temporary sewerage facilities that would open up lands for 15,700 new homes along Dublin's northern fringe.

Fingal Co Council is awaiting Department of the Environment and Local Government clarification over what types of temporary facilities would be acceptable, but the Department believes this decision rests with the local authority.

The suggestion that lands for almost 16,000 houses could be opened up quickly using temporary sewerage facilities arose when the Bacon report was issued earlier this month. The report said that the lack of services was an "infrastructure bottleneck". The Government indicated that "temporary" sewerage schemes would be acceptable until the completion of the £17 million Northern Fringe Interceptor Sewer scheme which is due to be ready in 2004. This major scheme would open up lands from Ballymun to Baldoyle.

Fingal Council awaited DOE clarification about what type of temporary facilities would be acceptable, according to its senior engineer for water and drainage, Liam Coughlan. "It is unclear exactly what that entails," he said. The local authority, he said, had to take account of Government policy, and expected a meeting "within weeks".

"I haven't been informed as to what type of sewage treatment facilities would be acceptable. We are awaiting clarification from the Department of the Environment and Local Government."

A spokesman for the department said, however, that these decisions lay with the local authority. "That is the local authority's call," he said. He pointed to a circular sent to local authorities dated February 23rd, 1999, which indicated that the Government had "over recent times devolved significant additional responsibility to local authorities".

The circular noted that the Government had increased the budget for the Water and Sewerage Services Investment Programme, which had risen from £163m to £275m over the past three years. It had also put an additional £39m into the Serviced Land Initiative following the release of the first Bacon report.

The circular states that the local authorities "should facilitate development on the basis of interim and temporary arrangements for water/sewerage services pending the provision of the permanent infrastructure". Interim, it says, is when the authority provides facilities in advance of any building programme.

Temporary works, it says, can be proposed by property developers themselves. "Such proposals might include package sewage treatment plants, pumping stations and rising mains, booster pumping stations and/or storage tanks for water supply, etcetera, to operate for a period in which it might be reasonably expected that the infrastructural deficit will be made good by the local authority."

The developer-led approach runs counter to long established practice in the Fingal catchment. "Our big problem was, we were unhappy to have individual treatment works for individual development," Mr Coughlan said. "Our policy was we would provide large public facilities and we would run them."

Because of this, the authority was looking for guidelines from the Department, he said. There are various types of small scale temporary systems available which could handle the output from small developments. The departmental spokesman acknowledged that the local authorities could not begin to build facilities without financial clearance from the Department. Finance was available, however, and the systems had been speeded up to allow projects to go ahead more quickly, he added. "The whole Government policy is to increase the housing supply," he said.