Council ‘derided’ water report

OFFICIAL agencies poured scorn on a survey that found high water contamination levels on Lough Corrib, an environmental scientist claimed yesterday.

Dr Roderick O’Sullivan said he was “derided” after reporting high levels of faecal contamination in one of the country’s major lakes.

He told RTÉ Radio he made the discovery of severe pollution during an extensive survey in 1995 for a local fisheries group.

Galway county council’s director of environmental services Jim Cullen told RTÉ that “at no stage had raw sewage been discharged” from the water treatment plant at Oughterard into Lough Corrib.

Dr O’Sullivan said it came as “no surprise” to him the Galway water was contaminated by a pathogen that inhabited the intestines of animals.

He described the official response he got to his 1995 survey from a number of agencies as “derision and silence”.

He said: “The only State agency to welcome the report were the fishery boards. The county council derided it and ignored it.”