Damien Enright on options for the weed growing in bays.
IS the green weed that has proliferated in various bays of west Cork and elsewhere along the coast a waste product or a resource? From early spring until late summer it is an unsightly and noxious nuisance, fouling boats, barring bathers from beaches and walkers from coastal paths pervaded by its odour. As winters grow milder, it is still flourishing in November. Visitors might be forgiven for thinking that some Irish bays have been transformed into golf courses, with fairways as flat as a billiard tables stretching for miles.
While the green acres look pretty in spring or autumn sunlight, they are not a pleasant sight when the weed is washed onshore in summer, dries out and begins to decay. It is then the colour of an elephant’s hide; where it piles up, with limbs of kelp protruding from it, it might be mistaken for the carcasses of dead elephants. Except dead elephants might smell better. The odour of decaying sea lettuce and gut weed is pungent, potent and, in close proximity, brings water to the eyes.
Clearly, something must be done. Year on year, it increases in volume and range, the enteromorpha algae rooting further and further up the mudflats of the shallower bays and the sea lettuce forming hillocks of slurry-like rotting vegetation along the tide-lines of magnificent strands.
If it is designated a waste product, a licence must be obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency for its disposal in pre-approved locations. Such disposal would be costly and wasteful of a potentially valuable energy source.
However, if the EPA designates it a resource, local farmers could be licensed to use it on their land. Many would be happy to spread it after silage cuts or plough it in to enrich the soil for winter barley. Both weeds contain iodine, manganese, sodium, selenium, zinc and iron. The only cost would that of collection and distribution, which would be paid for by the end-users, not the public. A problem would be made an advantage. As it would be useless once rotted, farmers would collect it fresh from the shore. It would not be on the beach long enough to rot.
In recent years, Cork Country Council has tried to use JCBs to scour the green tides from some blue flag beaches. However, experience indicates that this method poses more problems that it solves. The machines dig deep into the sand and can endanger the peat base structure of the shore.
Isabelle Sutton of Kinsale Town Council and the Green Party suggests that the use of horses drawing rakes would remove this risk. However, the problem is the non-offensive, non-environmentally damaging disposal of the weed wherever it is relocated other than broadcast or buried on the land. When it is gathered in piles, it rots just as it would if left on the tide-line but, because of the greater weight and volume, smells all the worse and leaks toxic slurry into the sea.
At a recent meeting of the environmental Strategic Planning Committee of Cork County Council, Cllr Veronica Neville asked that the EPA formally declare the weed a resource that could be removed and used by farmers without a licence requirement. This would save clean-up and bureaucratic costs. The SPC proposed that University College Cork be funded for research into possible fuel-energy uses to which the weed could be put.
Causes for the increase of the weed include nutrients reaching the sea, including sewage, farm effluents, run-off fertilisers and industrial waste. Urgent measures to reduce such nutrients must be put in place. Clonakilty, with a blue flag beach at Inchdoney, requires an upgrade of its sewage system to cope with increasing visitor numbers. A scheme to construct a state-of-the-art sewage facility on Courtmacsherry Bay, with its blue flag beach at Harbour View, was promised by Cork County Council and included in Environment Minister John Gormley’s Water Services Investment Programme 2007-09.
However, John Young, the Courtmacsherry Development Association chairman and a robust defender of the bay, tells me that the report on the investment still awaits approval on Mr Gormley’s desk in Dublin. The local expectation is that, as a Green minister, he will ensure that the scheme goes ahead in 2009 as scheduled and will not be subject to cutbacks which would endanger the effectiveness of the measures.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, November 24, 2008
