Kenmare bathing spots put ‘out of bounds’ by sewage

Anne Lucey

There have been calls for a serious upgrade to a wastewater treatment plant after popular bathing spots along Kenmare Bay were out of bounds to the public due to untreated effluent seeping into the Co Kerry town’s main river last week.

Effluent from the local sewage treatment plant had to be transported by tanker to a wastewater treatment plant in Killarney since last week after a technical problem arose in Kenmare, it has emerged.

The busy year-round market town is a huge tourist attraction and also a weekend retreat for second homeowners.

Kenmare pier and Templenoe, further west along the bay, saw the erection of precautionary warning signs advising against bathing or water-based activities.

The entire Kenmare Bay, a sunken fjord, is a special area of conservation and a popular spot for eco-tourism. Seals are a big attraction and, until recent years, whale watching was extensive.

Kerry County Council, which co-manages the waters, last Thursday advised potential weekend bathers not to dip, or engage in water-based activities “as a precautionary measure”.

Kenmare’s sewage treatment plant is just around 25m from the Finnihy River, which flows through the town, and several hundred metres from the bay.

The local authority said untreated effluent had been discharged into the Finnihy which runs into Kenmare Bay. The town, which had decades-long problems with water supply, saw a new €5m water treatment plant completed in June last.

The EPA, which has been informed of the current problem, has already informed utility company Irish Water the Kenmare sewage treatment plant also needs to be upgraded, and this should be done urgently. The sewage plant was discovered to be overloaded in July.

Councillor Patrick Connor-Scarteen recalled that it has been 23 years since the last upgrade, when the resident population was 1,400. It is now around 2,500.

“The bottom line here is we need an upgrade if not a new wastewater treatment unit in Kenmare,” he said.

Meanwhile, the local authority said there had been “a significant improvement in the situation over the last four days”. Water services staff were continuing to monitor the situation closely and the precautionary signage will be removed when testing shows that the water quality had returned to normal quality levels, the council said.

Irish Water blamed the discharge on a failure in the control part of a sludge dewatering unit and asserted that tests indicated water quality in the bay had not been affected., tests had indicated.