Residents in Ardmore and Dunmore East in Co Waterford have made a second complaint to the European Commission against Ireland for breach of the Bathing Water Directive.
Residents, including artist Róisín O'Shea and her husband, Donald Sutherland, lodged the complaint to Brussels last week. Ms O'Shea said Stradbally Cove, Ardmore and Dunmore East had a serious problem with raw sewage being discharged into waters where children swim.
"In the last four years all three locations have seen significant new housing developments despite no sewage treatment facilities being in place," she said.
"Since Waterford County Council seem determined to press ahead granting yet further planning permissions we had no option but to take our case to a higher authority."
The couple recently met a legal representative of DG Environment, which drafts EU strategy on the environment, to submit additional information to an original case in 2001 that cited the problem at Stradbally Cove.
Ms O'Shea and her husband moved from Dublin to the small village of Stradbally five years ago. "I wanted to move back to nature to follow in the footsteps of nine generations and to return to an area of overwhelming beauty," she said. "I was disappointed to discover problems with the drinking water and untreated sewage spilling on to our beaches."
Ms O'Shea joined the Stradbally Tourism and Enterprise Group, which collected water samples that were processed at a lab in Dungarvan. The results revealed that E.coli levels had escalated, she said.
Mr Gabriel Hynes, of Waterford County Council, said the beaches were compliant with EU mandatory standards, and were between 90-100 per cent compliant with Irish water regulations.
He said any beach with a stream running through it risked a higher level of contamination because of the natural run-off from the land. He said €42 million had been allocated for new collection systems and secondary treatment plants to replace existing septic tanks.