By Sean Moriarty

Sewage from the Killarney Urban District gets pumped into the lakes during heavy rains, a Kerry County Council official has confirmed.

The official was responding to a motion raised by Cllr Donal Grady at Wednesday’s Killarney Municipal District meeting.

Cllr Grady asked: “How much raw sewerage is going into our rivers and lakes and how much is being by-passed at our Waste Water Treatment Plant in heavy rain?”

A council engineer stated that the practice of releasing sewage into a water network during heavy rain is a common engineering practice all over the world.

“The sewer pipe network in Killarney is a combined system wherein the foul and storm water drainage is all collected in a common pipe,” he said.

“Occasionally, where there is heavy, sustained rainfall, the excess flow of waste water is designed to be released through outlets referred to as Storm Water Overflows. Storm Water Overflows act as emergency safety valves and release the excess flow from the sewer directly into local waters, such as rivers. These Storm Water Overflows are common practice and without these releases there could be a greater risk to the environment and people’s health because the sewer and treatment plant could become inundated, resulted in flooding in urban areas. These discharges from Storm Water Overflows are diluted by the coinciding rainwater.”

He added that the level of dilution is so great during heavy rain that it does not pose any sort of health risk and that the water quality in Lough Leane in Killarney is extensively and comprehensively monitored on an ongoing basis.