Lough Derg Pipe landowners to be offered financial compensation or CPO

LANDOWNERS and farmers living along the route of the proposed Pipe bringing water from Lough Derg to Dublin will be offered one of two choices, the Midland Tribune has learned.
An anonymous source told this journalist that the State will offer financial compensation to those people whose land is affected, and if the compensation is rejected then the land will be compulsorily purchased.
The IFA will be liaising between the State and the farmers in the distribution of the compensation payments, the Tribune was told.
Pumping water from Lough Derg to Dublin was first proposed way back in 2007. Since then the proposed cost of this infrastructural project has ballooned from €700 million to a number of different estimates ranging from €3.3 billion to €10.4 billion.
Last June the government cabinet gave the official go-ahead to the project. A government statement pointed out that the development, which will be driven by the State-owned company Uisce Éireann (Irish Water) is necessary “to support housing and economic growth.” It described the 170km (105 miles) pipeline as "one of the largest and most important infrastructure projects in the history of the State". At the moment Dublin is heavily dependent on the River Liffey for its water supply and the government says this dependence on the Liffey and two treatment works in County Kildare has created a “serious vulnerability” to risks such as “prolonged drought or contamination” in the country’s most heavily populated area.
The Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said the decision by the cabinet to press ahead with the Pipe was "an important first step in what is a multi-billion Euro project which will ensure a sustainable water supply for our country both now and into the future". He said it will fulfil one of the key recommendations in the recently published Housing Commission report on the need for urgent action on water supplies.
There are many people living in the Lough Derg region who are opposed to the Pipe. A number of Councillors in Clare, Limerick and Tipperary County Councils are against the idea. One of them is Cllr Seamus Morris of Nenagh Municipal District. During one meeting of Nenagh MD, Cllr Morris pointed out that the Pipe project has statutory status because it is included in the National Development Plan.
“I think the statutory status of the Pipe should be revisited,” he said, adding that the obvious solution would be to fix the huge leakage problem in Dublin's system. “I think they don't want to fix the leaks. They just want to take the water from Lough Derg.”
A couple of years ago the Councillor made enquiries about the project to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU). “I made my concerns known to the CRU,” he remarked. “I raised the issue of value for money and the appropriate spending of money. I didn't receive any answers. Piping 330 million litres of water from Lough Derg has the potential to destroy the eco-balance of the region. It is important to note that the amount of water that will be treated and pumped to Dublin is about the same amount being lost in leaks in Dublin. The leakage rate in Dublin is about 50%. The Lough Derg pipe project is the greatest environmental and economic threat to the Southern region. The project will pump millions of litres of expensively treated water 100 miles in six foot pipes, destroying the fine agricultural land along the way, not to mention the fact that the area that it is being pumped from is protected by the European Directive Natura 2000 as a Special Area of Conservation. The pumping station at Parteen will produce millions of tonnes of sludge. The water will then be pumped to pipes in Dublin which are leaking millions of litres of treated water a day meaning that much of the water pumped from the Shannon will mostly be leaked into the ground. The preference seems to be to dig up the fine agricultural land of Tipperary rather than the streets of Dublin.”
Fight the Pipe’s Liam Minehan is one of around 500 landowners along the route. Fight the Pipe has been a vocal opponent for several years and has repeatedly pointed out that some farmers would not like any disruption caused to their land. “Uisce Éireann are proposing to take a strip of land off me for the pipe,” said Liam. “One day the compensation money will be long gone, and somebody will walk out into my field and say, ‘Look at what that fool let them do’ – and that will be my negative contribution to the farm. A lot of landowners think these Compulsory Purchase Orders are inevitable. Some people think it will never actually happen. I think it's just a really bad idea and they should solve the leaks in Dublin.”
The next stage for the project involves Uisce Éireann submitting a planning application, with construction expected to take around five years.
The River Shannon Protection Alliance is also opposed to the project. Chairman of the group Gerry Siney believes the pipe will cause significant environmental damage. “It will also have a highly negative impact on the Mid-West region,” he remarked, “because they want this water to keep attracting Foreign Direct Investment into the Dublin area. Foreign Direct Investment is needed in the Mid-West where we already have the water. If they keep using the vast majority of the water that is available for industry in Dublin, the Mid-West will have limited scope for attracting Foreign Direct Investment. It should be a question of bringing industry to where the water is available, not the other way around. It will also cause serious issues for fishing as the river contains several European Special Areas of Conservation.”
See also page 11.