Waterford County Council is to commission a new study to provide for the development and expansion of the seaside resort of Tramore.
However, no development will get under way for at least another 18 months until the problem of raw sewage being washed ashore is eliminated.
Under a two-pronged approach to the sewage problem Waterford County Council has recently started building a €20 million waste water treatment plant and will install a new collection sewer for the town to serve the new treatment plant.
Only then will the town be allowed to grow in size according to a spokesman who said there was no question of the new sewer leading to the expansion of the town before the treatment plant is working.
The problem of raw sewage in Tramore is exacerbated each summer when the seaside town's population doubles to about 16,000 people. Bathers have been warned not to swim near the pier while the beach has also lost its blue flag status. A council dump which was leaking into the sea has now been closed.
The council has acknowledged problems with sewage and leachate from the dump being washed ashore, and said part of the problem was because the sewage outfall discharges only 500 metres out from the shore.
New pumping stations built in recent years are still pumping to the outfall and will continue to do so until the new treatment plant is commissioned in mid 2007. Until then a newly build, two kilometre sewage outfall will also remain unused.
The new waste water treatment plant will have capacity to serve a population of 20,000 when it opens in the second half of 2007. In the meantime, council engineers have proposed the new study, which was advertised on the Government's e-tendering website this week.
Efforts to eliminate sewage being washed into Tramore harbour and on to local beaches date back to the early 1960s when the issue was raised in Dáil debates.
More recently EU environment commissioner Stavos Dimas revealed action was being taken against Ireland in the European Court over failure to transpose environmental directives into law - some of them dating back to 1991 - and failure to implement some directives which had been transposed. One of the examples cited by Mr Dimas was the sewage issue in Tramore.
Fine Gael TD for Waterford John Deasy has described ongoing delays in dealing with the issue as "a farce".
