A report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that found serious issues in the treatment of waste water around the country represents “jaw-dropping hypocrisy”, according to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA).
In its Urban Waste Water Treatment for 2022 report, the EPA said that 26 towns and villages were discharging raw sewage into water courses in mid-2023, because these areas are not connected to treatment plants.
The volume of raw sewage, from the equivalent of 54,000 people, being discharged daily at these locations could fill three Olympic size swimming pools, the agency said.
According to Pat McCormack, the president of the ICMSA, the report reveals a disparity between how water pollution from agricultural sources is regarded versus waste water pollution.
“It is worth pointing out that any single farmer in Ireland would find himself in court for even one instance of such gross negligence, much less an ongoing daily basis,” McCormack said.
“Yet again we are being treated to the site of numerous official agencies and councils failing abjectly to carry out tasks that those very same agencies and councils were actually prosecuting farmers and other individuals for on grounds of alleges non-compliance,” he added.
“It was beyond ordinary hypocrisy, and represents a double-standard that is so jaw-dropping it is nearly in a class of its own,” McCormack commented.
“Every farmer in Ireland is aware, often painfully so, of their obligations to prevent discharges like this into their local rivers and waterways.
“Imagine the kind of stress that farmers in east Co. Cork have been experiencing over the last week when their slurry storage was flooded, and they could have found themselves liable for runoffs into local waterways,” the ICMSA president said.
McCormack said that two towns in the east Co. Cork area were among the 26 towns where untreated sewage was being discharged.
“Farmers have had just about enough of this kind of nonsense and gross hypocrisy,” he said.
“Stop presuming to lecture farmers on damaging waterways until you’ve stopped blatantly pumping untreated sewage into them all over the country without let, hinderance or even an expression of regret.”
According to McCormack, farmers are investing on a daily basis in environmental measures and are expected to implement those measures “with minimum notice”; while the government “is happy to give its own lavishly resources agencies up to 20 years to resolve their issues”.
“Farm families are being wiped out through environmental measures while the state protects its own agencies from any censure or repercussion. We can’t go on having these two very different standards of compliance,” the ICMSA president said.