Discrimination claim over Ballyhornan sewage work

Discrimination claim over Ballyhornan sewage work

6 November 2013

A FAILURE to designate parts of the Lecale coast as ‘bathing water’ territory has permitted substandard sewage treatment at Ballyhornan, according to a local councillor.

Councillor Cadogan Enright, who claims that much of the North Down coast was considered bathing territory, said it meant installing the most advanced sewage treatment works locally wouldn’t be considered necessary.

The politician said he discovered the bathing water issue was at the heart of the Ballyhornan’s problems following Freedom of Information requests to the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).

Work is currently underway on a new sewage sieving system at Ballyhornan following years of complaints of raw sewage flowing into the sea at the beauty spot. However, it has been labelled as too little, too late by some residents, who had hoped villages along the coast would be connected to the new £2.5m treatment plant in Ardglass.

“The NIEA confirmed in its letter that different standards are used for deciding the quality of water on the Lecale coast, when compared to the quality of water on the North Down ‘gold coast’,” said councillor Enright.

Councillor Enright said the NIEA pointed to the “significantly smaller population” in Lecale compared to the North Down coast, and the fact that there are no designated bathing waters along the Lecale Coast.

Pointing to the new state-of-the-art sewage treatment works in North Down, councillor Enright said there was “blatant discrimination” against the people of Down District.

“The Strangford and Lecale area serves not only our own population, but also serves a huge number of tourists during what the NIEA describe as ‘the bathing season’,” he said. “It makes no sense to base population figures in tourist areas on local residents alone — we need to address the realities on the ground.

“Furthermore, not to designate our beaches as ‘bathing waters’ but to designate all the main beaches in North Down as ‘bathing waters’ is totally daft from the point of view of developing the tourist industry.”

Councillor Enright said his research also indicated Ballyhornan was listed for consideration as a bathing area under the 2011 EU directive on bathing waters, but later disappeared from the proposal.

He also said Tyrella and Murlough beaches fell under the Lecale umbrella and had been designated bathing beaches by the Department of the Environment.

Local resident Barry Mervyn said they now planned to find out why the NIEA had “set the standards so low for Ballyhornan and right along the Lecale Coast”.

“Northern Ireland Water are telling us that the standards set by the NIEA allows them to

implement a solution that still allows sewage discharges on our beach,” he said. “This scheme is only papering over cracks, and seems to be a pointless exercise if they are only sieving solids while continuing to discharge sewage into the sea.”