Making a splash in clean Dublin Bay

One of the most advanced water-waste treatment plants in the world, which will dramatically improve water quality in Dublin Bay, will be officially opened by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, today.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Dermot Lacey, will go swimming at Dublin Bay's south wall this morning to mark the official switching on of the new €300 million system.

The Lord Mayor, who will perform the opening jointly with the Taoiseach, will use the swim to demonstrate the improvement in water quality in the bay since parts of the project were commissioned over the past few years.

The Dublin Bay project is one of the most advanced of its kind in the world.

It will put an end to the dumping of more than 40 million gallons of raw sewage in the bay each day as well as the dumping of sludge by barge in the Irish Sea.

The plant uses an undersea sewage pipeline to link outflows from north Dublin and Howth via a pumping station at Sutton to Ringsend.

A similar pipeline links outflows along the southern shore of the bay through a pumping station in Dun Laoghaire to Ringsend.

At the Ringsend plant only natural methods - aeration, heat and ultraviolet light - are used in the purification process.

Sludge is dried at high temperature, killing off impurities and is sold as Biofert fertiliser to farmers throughout Leinster.

When announced by Dublin Corporation in March 1996 the project was estimated to cost about €254 million (£200 million).

Additional works requested by the local authority accounted for the increase to €300 million.

The "fixed-price" nature of the design-and-build contract subsequently became the subject of much attention.

By comparison other large-scale infrastructure projects, particularly motorways, overran their budgets significantly, costing as much as double the initial price.

Since going into operation, the project has become something of an attraction.

There are regular visits from the engineering staff of other European cities - particularly candidate members of the EU - to learn about the spending of EU Cohesion funding.

The waste-water treatment plant now includes an "interpretative centre" with a lecture theatre and full audiovisual facilities to assist visitors.

For Dubliners, however, the plant offers the prospect of Blue Flag beaches at Dollymount, Merrion and Sandymount strands.

Initial water monitoring which got under way during the bathing season this summer has so far found quality of a sufficiently high standard.

Swimmers enjoying Dublin Bay this year do so in waters which are cleaner than they have been for more than 100 years.

"That is an assurance I am counting on," Cllr Lacey told The Irish Times yesterday.

The Lord Mayor added that he was more concerned about "appearing nearly naked" in front of his constituents than he was about swimming in the bay.

Cllr Lacey's swim follows that of fellow Labour councillor Jane Dillon-Byrne from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, who swam at Seapoint as the Minister for the Environment was presenting the beach with a Blue Flag, earlier this month.