BALBRIGGAN BEACH in north Dublin remains closed today after raw sewage pumped into the sea caused E.coli contamination to reach five times the upper limit for safe bathing waters.
Raw sewage was discharged into the Irish Sea for up to 26 hours because a malfunction went unnoticed at a pumping station.
A member of the public raised the alarm on Tuesday afternoon when the waste water was washed back on to the beach with the tide.
Water quality tests revealed the E.coli contamination was five times the upper limit for safe bathing waters – but it was 100 times the Blue Flag standard for beaches.
A spokeswoman for Fingal County Council said the results of water sampling tests due today should reveal whether the beach can be reopened.
Campaigners against the construction of a Dublin regional sewage treatment plant in Fingal said the pollution showed engineers and technology cannot stop an environmental disaster.
Brian Hosford, chairman of Reclaim Fingal Alliance, said if a larger plant was built, a bigger catastrophe could happen.
“We believe a monster plant will have a detrimental effect on communities, the farming, horticulture and fishing sectors, and destroy an environmentally sensitive coastline which has several areas of special protection.”
The council spokeswoman said larger plants had a significantly higher level of engineering resilience, with on-site power generation and overflow storage capacity. This would mean localised power outages and temporary pump failures would not result in the kind of overflow discharge to sea that happened at the pumping stations at Isaacs Bower and Rush Road, she said.
