Updates to flood relief works in the Loughrea Municipal District (MD ) area were provided to councillors at Monday’s Loughrea MD meeting.
Enda Gallagher, Senior Executive Engineer, provided an update on flood relief measures to the local representatives present at the meeting, stating that despite some delays relating to gates for flood-prone areas, the Gort Lowlands Scheme.
He confirmed that bat surveys are ongoing, and engagement with the National Parks service is ongoing. Despite the delays, Gallagher says that the project is “near enough to schedule on that” and hopes to have certain sections “closed out by Christmas”.
In addition to updating the collected group of local representatives on the scheme, Gallagher also revealed that following investigation of the flood maps for the area, an additional 45 homes were discovered to be located within the flood plain area, and that investigation into the history of those homes’ flooding is now being looked into.
“We will be calling around this week to speak with landowners about this, and will be asking them to do a very brief survey, which will be completed hopefully by the end of the month or by October. “
Regarding the discovery of these homes, Cllr Martina Kinane (FF ) asked if such follow-up could potentially cause issues for the homeowners involved.
“I am just a little concerned that for those 45 houses, the owners didn’t identify or notify anyone that they flooded, for reasons we don’t know. I understand you want to get a handle on this for the future, but are they obliged to inform anyone regarding the flooding?
“Some people may be slow to say I want to be on a map that identifies my home as being in a flooding area.”
Gallagher quickly explained that, regardless of notifying the local authority regarding previous incidents of flooding, since the creation of sea frame mapping some two decades ago, these homes are automatically highlighted as being located in a flood-prone area.
“They already are on maps. A large majority of these homes were constructed 30-40 years ago, well before sea frame mapping, but once the maps were created, they were automatically placed on flood plain maps.
“The maps were already there; we are not inventing the wheel here by highlighting these homes.”
Despite the updates being relatively on track, councillors present expressed concerns about how long the process was taking as a whole.
“This is taking such a long time. Do we need to go back and speak to a minister, or what do we need next to move it forward?” said Cllr Geraldine Donohoe (Ind ). It is frustrating that it is taking so long. If we go into an event of flooding again, there will be people saying that we do nothing.”
