The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy has recommended that a new set of regulations, standards and practices for farming near large water-bodies such as coastal lagoons should be developed to halt environmental decline and ensure long-term protection.
The recommendation is one of seven in a report produced by the committee in response to the recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study of Wexford’s Lady’s Island lake.
As Afloat reported last January, the coastal lagoon is so polluted that it has resulted in harmful algal blooms and fish kills.
It has so little oxygen that few species can survive, the paper’s main authors, Dr Brendan O’Connor of Aquafact, Dr Cilian Roden and Geoff Oliver said.
Aquafact Consultancy was commissioned to undertake the study as part of the Coastal Lagoons: Ecology and Restoration (CLEAR) research programme.
“The continuing ecological crisis taking place at Lady’s Island Lake in County Wexford is a devastating example of environmental decline in Ireland today. For over 40 years, the situation has continued to deteriorate despite the efforts of the local community,”the Oireachtas committee deputy chair, Naoise Ó Muirí TD, has said.
“This issue highlights a failure in public administration as regulations and standards were clearly insufficient to protect the Lake yet no public body saw it as their responsibility to show leadership to reverse that decline,” Ó Muirí said.
The seven recommendations include directing that Wexford County Council leads the long-term restoration of Lady’s Island lake with the full support of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; the EPA; the NPWS; LAWPRO; Teagasc and Uisce Éireann.
Taking inspiration from the Duncannon European Innovation Partnership and the Lough Carra project in Co Mayo, the committee also recommends that “the enthusiasm and participation of local community and farmers surrounding Lady’s Island Lake is fully harnessed into the restoration project”.
It says that the action taken to restore Lady’s Island “should be used as a national exemplar of community-led agri-environmental schemes”.
It says that “ lessons learned from this process should directly inform the design of future schemes to address nutrient pollution and habitat restoration”.
You can read the Committee's Report here
