Uisce Éireann has resubmitted a planning application to Galway City Council for a 950 cubic metre concrete storage tank at the Merlin Pumping Station capable of storing almost one million litres of liquid, equivalent to more than three Leisureland-sized swimming pools. It previously withdrew an almost identical application in 2023.
A planning submission from the Galway branch of An Taisce, although not objecting to a new tank at the Merlin pumping station, does raise a number of questions concerning the entire city’s waste water storage, treatment and transport system between Oranmore and Barna via Mutton Island. The proposed underground storage tank will be located 150m outbound along the Old Dublin Road from the gates of Merlin Park Hospital where it will be fed by one of the city’s main underground wastewater pipes.
“Look, we welcome investment like this, like a new wastewater tank that’s important for planning and building homes in the east of the city, but it’s Irish Water’s lack of transparency and unwillingness to explain how it is working out the necessary capacity of the entire system that’s the problem,” says An Taisce spokesman Peter Butler.
Butler points to 18 requests for further information in the heritage body’s planning submission, and nine suggested recommendations for Galway City planners who must decide whether the scheme goes ahead. Some queries refer to infrastructure commitments dating from the 1990s.
“Unfortunately the planning process is often the only way to get information and commitments from Irish Water,” says Butler.
The proposed pumping station upgrade will include overground odour control units, and small kiosks containing control stations. Tank washdown units and a 2m high security fence will the most visible elements.
An Taisce’s 20-page submission highlights that Uisce Éireann has issued ‘confirmations of feasibility’ to connect housing developments in Ardaun, Oranhill, and across Oranmore to the waste water system, despite evidence that pumping stations across the district are regularly channelling large quantities of waste water into Galway Bay – possibly in breach of Environmental Protection Agency licences. Property developers in the area are understood to be concerned that residential and commercial schemes may not progress if wastewater facilities are under-resourced.
In a statement, Uisce Éireann said it was awaiting planning permission from Galway City Council and was committed to environmentally sound upgrades of critical infrastructure.
“Uisce Éireann engaged with stakeholders on the proposed design for the water and wastewater network extensions to service the Ardaun area. If planning permission is granted, Uisce Éireann will communicate the delivery timeframe for the project to all key stakeholders,” a spokeswoman said in response to queries on the Merlin proposals.
To illustrate the lack of wastewater capacity across Galway, An Taisce’s submission explains how over ten months last year, sludge tanker trucks had to make 20 journeys to bring 660 cubic metres of wastewater from the Barna pumping station to a manhole cover on the Cappagh Road where it was decanted into a major wastewater main. It also outlines that the two main pipes which link east and west Galway along the Corrib estuary at the Claddagh are in dire need of serious maintenance, and that a third is needed.
An Taisce’s submission claims vital upgrades on Storm Water Overflow valves across Galway city and Oranmore have been “repeatedly long-fingered” since Irish Water’s capital investment plan for the Galway drainage area was first published in 2014, and that no significant works have been carried out on the network despite three successive investment plans over a decade.
