When the Cork main drainage scheme was first proposed some years ago, people and traders were asked to accept the inevitable disruption that would accompany digging up the commercial centre of the city.
It was claimed it would be short-term discomfort to achieve long-term gain, notably, a River Lee that would be so clean, the people would be able to swim in it again.
The time for that promise to be put to the test is drawing close.
Yesterday, the £56 million (€71.1 million) contract for the final element of the £200 million (€254 million) scheme was signed by Cork Corporation and Consort Joint Venture, an amalgam of five national and international companies, for the construction of one of the largest water treatment plants to be built in this country.
It will have enough capacity to cater for the greater Cork area over the next two decades. In other words, all the sewerage pipes which until now have been dumping untreated matter into the Lee every day have been replaced with a new system which will direct it away from the river to the Atlantic Pond area on the outskirts of the city.
After initial treatment there, it will be pumped to the Carrigrennan site in Cork Harbour, where the treatment plant is being constructed.
Solid matter will become pellets for the fertiliser industry to be used as soil conditioner, etc, while the liquid residue will be treated and made harmless before being discharged at sea.
The promise held out is that the often foul-smelling Lee will lose its unwelcome pong, salmon stocks will return to the spawning beds via a river more suited to the noble species, and the Lee will be returned to the citizens of Cork as an amenity to be used and enjoyed.
At a news conference announcing this some years ago, an official in City Hall was so sure of the beneficial effects of the main drainage scheme that he promised to lead swimmers back into the river once the myriad elements of the scheme were finally in place.
The treatment plant will be completed by the end of 2003 and should be operating by early 2004. Shortly afterwards, the moment of truth for the City Hall official will arrive and he will be reminded of his promise.
The cleaning of the Lee comes at a time when multi-million pound plans are underway to transform Cork's docklands into a new urban quarter adjoining the city, bringing the area into the mainstream of the city's commercial, leisure and residential life.
The revitalised River Lee is very much part of the plan but it could play no part in it unless the gargantuan effort involved in the main drainage scheme had first been put in place.