WATER SUPPLY in the greater Dublin area is on a knife-edge, with demand likely to outstrip available reserves within a few years, according to a report prepared by consultants for seven local authorities.

The capital has no strategic reserves of water when it should have 10-20 per cent reserves at a minimum, while existing sources are operating near sustainable limits, the report by consultants RPS-Veolia JV states.

Dublin city councillors this week approved the consultants’ main proposal to bring excess water from the basin of the Shannon river to meet needs in the east and midlands.

The decision was taken by the council’s environment and engineering strategic policy committee (SPC) following a presentation by the consultants working for the Dublin Supply Project.

Dublin Supply Project Options © RPS Engineering

It is expected to be confirmed by the entire council later this year and will then go to An Bord Pleanála following a six-month consultation period.

The plan, the first major water supply project since the Liffey was dammed at Poulaphouca and Leixlip in the 1940s, will cost €470 million to construct over 10 years, with annual operational costs ranging from €8-15 million.

The report says the Dublin region is again approaching the stage where new long-term, secure and sustainable supplies of water are critical to its development and to the performance of the State.

“It has to be done; there is no other way,” said Fine Gael councillor Naoise Ó Muirí, who chairs the environment and engineering SPC.

The cost of operating desalination plants was too high, while international experience showed it was very difficult to reduce leakage below 20 per cent, he added.

There are currently four main water treatment plants in the greater Dublin region, which includes Kildare, north Wicklow and parts of Co Meath in addition to the capital. Their maximum output is between 540 and 550 million litres per day, while under normal circumstances demand is between 530 and 540 million litres per day.

The lack of space capacity in the Dublin system contrasts with Paris, where three treatment plants operate at just 60 per cent capacity.

The report says the fragility of the situation was starkly illustrated when increased leakages caused by last January’s cold snap led to restrictions in supply.

Leakage from the system has been reduced from 42 per cent in 1996 to 28 per cent in 2002, but the report says that the maximum supply levels will be reached in the 2020s despite further efforts to reduce leakage.

The report also points out that customer leakage losses average 65 litres per property per day, broadly comparable to the UK. It says this figure could be halved following the introduction of water metering.

“If a new source is not provided, the consequences would be supply restrictions of increasing frequency with impacts on social and economic interests combined with constraints on new development including employment generation in the region,” it warns.

A number of multinationals with plants in the region, such as Diageo, Intel and Wyeth, have expressed concern about the security and/or quality of water supplies, it is understood.

The report considered 10 different supply options, seven of them with the Shannon as the source, as well as a number of sites for desalination.

The preferred option, which involves taking the water from a point north of Lough Derg and piping it to a reservoir at a cutaway bog at Garryhinch, close to Portarlington, Co Laois, where it would be treated and distributed, involved the minimum cost, according to the consultants.

The Shannon proposal has met strong opposition from communities in the region, and local and national politicians.

IrishTimes

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The Minister also said he would this week receive the report of the “authorised officer” he appointed in March to examine the contract between Dublin City Council and a consortium to build the €350 million incinerator.

Senior counsel and accountant John Hennessy was appointed to carry out an independent examination of the Poolbeg contract, including an examination of its financial implications in Dublin.

His remit included assessment of the financial risks should Dublin City Council and the three other Dublin local authorities be unable to meet the volumes of waste committed to in the “put-or-pay” clause of the contract, which requires the council to provide 320,000 tonnes of residual waste every year. The report may also look at the issue of compensation should the Poolbeg project be repudiated or scaled down.

As the war of words continued in the wake of the Minister’s publication last week of a draft waste policy plan which would make large incinerators such as Poolbeg unviable, Mr Gormley insisted Ireland was compliant with EU directives.

North Dublin Fianna Fail TD Michael Kennedy this morning insisted he had no reservations about the plant and called on Mr Gormley to grant a foreshore licence so the project can proceed.

Mr Kennedy told RTE Radio there was an agreement in place with Covanta Energy to run the plant and that a company that enters a contract has a right to compensation if it does not proceed.

Mr Kennedy would not be drawn on claims Mr Gormley had a conflict of interests in the plant as it was located in his constituency.

Mr Gormley said there was a “co-ordinated campaign saying we’re going to be facing fines. That’s absolutely untrue. It’s scaremongering. I would never allow anything like that to happen as Minister. I’ve been probably the most vigilant Minister in trying to deal with EU directives. I’ve made sure that the waste hierarchy is the thing that we abide by.”

He insisted Ireland would meet its waste management targets for 2010, and said the proponents of the Poolbeg incinerator “want the Minister to come in on his white steed and say ‘oh don’t worry, I’m going to make things nice for you’. Well, I’m not.”

Mr Gormley added: “I’m going ahead with my policy. I will be introducing the levy system.”
Ireland has “the lowest landfill prices in Europe. We have to have a landfill levy because we have to abide by the landfill directive.”

The Minister believed the “path we are pursuing is by far and away the most sustainable path in terms of waste management”. The local authorities “don’t want it because it conflicts totally with their ambition to construct a 600,000 tonnes incinerator”.

He said: “They cannot feed the beast at the moment. It’s just too big. They know that. The only way they can do that is by controlling the waste. They can’t do that in light of the McKechnie judgment.”

The High Court ruled in December 2009 that the council had abused its dominant position in the Dublin waste market by adopting a variation of its 1998 waste management plan, decreeing that waste would only be collected by the four local authorities or their chosen contractors.

Mr Gormley said the authorities wanted him to introduce legislation to reverse the McKechnie judgment. “I’m saying to you absolutely that I’m not going to do it.”

The local authorities, he added, “don’t control the waste”.

IrishTimes

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MAJOR NEW planning legislation to be published today will dramatically clamp down on retentions for large developments and on the rampant expansion of quarries.

The Planning Bill 2010 will be published by Minister for the Environment John Gormley and is partly designed to target problems that persistently cropped up during the property boom which existing planning legislation was not equipped to deal with.

On the retention issue, the Bill will require that it will no longer be possible for planning permission to be granted for retention of developments built without planning permission, where the development would have required an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

The effect of this is that a major development that required an EIA and was built without planning permission must be demolished.

There are also new retention powers in relation to illegal developments on certain European-designated wildlife sites.

In the quarry sector, the new Bill will introduce a strictly time-limited sunset provision which will allow quarries with a generally compliant planning record to apply to An Bord Pleanála to regularise their activities through a new “substitute consent” process.

There will also be a new requirement for local authorities to prepare a complete inventory of all quarries in their jurisdiction. Quarries that never had planning permission or failed to register under S.261 of the Planning Act 2000 will not qualify for substitute consent.

Improved enforcement provisions in the Bill will require local authorities to immediately take enforcement proceedings against quarries which are refused substitute consent or are otherwise non-compliant.

There are also new provisions for the protection and strengthening of public rights of way.

Irish Times

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OFFSHORE WIND energy producers are hoping major support for the industry will be signalled by EU Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs, when he addresses their annual conference in Dublin today.

Currently in excess of 2,500 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind energy are in planning, alongside about another 8,000MW of onshore wind energy, representing potential investment of about €23 billion.

But while this represents just a fraction of the island’s total wind energy potential, the electricity is vastly in excess of Ireland’s own demand, and selling it abroad is dependent on major investment in the national grid and interconnectors to the UK.

Members of the National Offshore Wind Association (Now) which holds its annual conference today, are hoping Mr Piebalgs will say EU enthusiasm to replace imported fossil fuels with renewable energy will result in financial support for developing the Irish industry.

In recent weeks the European Investment Bank announced up to €300 million in soft loans for an interconnector between Ireland and the UK, while a further allocation of up to €200 million was approved for development of the ESB’s renewable energy businesses, principally wind farms.

However, given the potential of Irish wind energy, Now says many more interconnectors will be needed if wind energy is to be exploited.

Sources told The Irish Times an alternative proposal, that Irish wind farms located in the Irish Sea would seek connections to the UK grid, is also being considered. A third possibility is that a separate grid would be established to cater for offshore power.

A report from wind turbine manufacturer Siemens in recent weeks, calculated the value of proposed European wind farms over the next 25 years to be more than €300 billion.

Proposed Irish offshore wind farms included in this calculation were:

Clogher Head Oriel Wind Farm, which projects 330MW;

Dublin Array Saorgus Energy, offering 725MW;

Proposal from Codling Bank Fred Olsen/Treasury Holdings would add 1100MW;

Airtricity is offering 500MW through its Arklow Bank 2 project;

Na Sceirde Fuinneamh in Co Galway is projecting 100MW.

Based on calculations by Siemens that it costs in the region of €3 million per MW to install wind generation, Irish members of Now would account for a potential investment of almost €7 billion.

Source:  IrishTimes – www.irishtimes.com

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AN BORD PLEANÁLA is to reopen a planning hearing into Dublin port proposals to infill 52 acres of Dublin bay.

The hearing was suspended last month after it emerged the board’s advisers HR Wallingford, had undertaken work on plans for Bremore port which is a potential rival for Dublin’s port’s expansion plans.

In a letter received by the parties to the hearing yesterday, the board said it did not accept there was a conflict of interest.

However, the board said it would be changing its advisers and dispensing with the services of HR Wallingford.

The hearing will reopen when new advisers read themselves into the brief.

The issue of conflict arose after it emerged during the inquiry that HR Wallingford had provided advice in 2004 to Drogheda Port Company which is planning a deep water port at Bremore, in north Co Dublin.

In deciding there was no conflict of interest the board noted the HR Wallingford adviser assigned to the case commenced employment with the company only in 2007. It also noted that in recent years HR Wallingford had also worked directly or indirectly for both Dublin Port Company and Dublin City Council.

The board said it will now appoint a new expert to replace the adviser but will reconvene the oral hearing under inspector Brendan Wyse as soon as feasible.

Welcoming the news, chairman of Dublin Bay Watch, Gerry Breen, said it was ‘‘keen to put our side of the argument to the hearing”.

Source:  IrishTimes – www.irishtimes.com

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I would also like to mention that an explosion of on shore windfarms may not be welcomed as well, as one would think.  Because lets face it, they can be seen from a fare distance away, they ain’t small!! I know EIS’s can be a right pain to get right, but they all come together to allow the authorities to make a better judgement of these turbines on the people and the land. Maybe offshore is a much better way to go? Sure there some proper winds out of the west cost.

Floating Wind Farms thats what we need, move them around over the contential shelf like the oil rigs do!

Good to see so much money will be invested though.

SOME €300 billion is set to be invested in European offshore windfarms over the next 20 years, according to a new report from wind turbine manufacturer Siemens.

The company, which recently signed contracts to supply up to 500 wind turbines for Dong Energy’s offshore windfarms in northern Europe, said there were existing commitments from investors for about 100 gigawatts (100,000 mega watts) across the continent.

At an installation cost cost of about €3 million per mega watt, Siemens said the total potential investment was in the order of €300 billion.

The company warned however that Ireland’s system of queuing projects for “gate” connections to the national grid meant Ireland would not be quick to achieve a significant share of the potential.

Currently the Republic has five offshore windfarms in the pipeline with a potential generating capacity of 2,655 mega watts, representing potential investment of almost €7 billion.

The next allocation of grid connections, known as Gate III, is due by next year. According to the Irish Wind Energy Association, though, Gate III is likely to give permissions for grid connections timed for about 2016.

Association chief executive Michael Walsh said some of the projects which might be approved under Gate III had been in the pipeline since 2004. To be in the pipeline since 2004 with a possible offer next year, and a potential connection in 2016, represented too much uncertainty over too long a time, he said.

Mr Walsh said, taking onshore and offshore wind proposals together, “there is about eight gigawatts in development, with a potential investment value of €16 billion to €18 billion”. About 3.9 giga watts were expected to be sanctioned by Gate III, he said.

A Department of Energy source acknowledged the difficulty but referred to plans by EirGrid to double the grid capacity under a €4 billion investment, by 2025.

The source also said it was planned to transfer control of the foreshore from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Environment in a bid to expedite the planning process for off-shore installations.

“We must upgrade the grid,” the source added. “There are parts of the country, usually where the wind is, where the network would not support the connection. Also we want to streamline planning and control so connections are ready and licences can be awarded like those for oil and gas.”
Source: IRISHTIMES

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HERITAGE & HABITAT: NOW THAT “development” is a dirty word in Ireland,  and building projects are too often seen in the light of destruction rather than construction, there is one kind of building project that is still a good thing – almost a morally good thing – and that’s bridges, writes GEMMA TIPTON

It’s easy to get carried away by bridges, but with Irish architects winning competitions to build bridges around the world, and global architects creating new ones here, it’s time we all started celebrating the not-so-humble bridge. Where does the morality come in? Can bridges be moral? If you can ascribe such qualities to inanimate objects, I believe they are – how else could you view such a means for bringing people together, closing distances, and linking communities, countries, and sometimes even continents? Take the Oresund, which you can see from the air as you fly into Copenhagen. It was opened in the year 2000, and spreads out like a dancing ribbon across the sea, connecting Denmark and Sweden for the first time since the Ice Age. Then there’s the Bosphorus Bridge that joins Europe and Asia. Venus Williams once played a tennis match here, against Turkish player Ipek Senoglu, it only lasted five minutes, but was the first tennis game in history to span two continents. Perhaps more excitingly (Europe and Asia already being attached by land elsewhere) is the proposed Bering Straits Bridge, which would link Asia, Africa and Europe with North and South America — meaning you could drive around much of the world. The Bering Straits Bridge proposition has been around for a while, and at the same time as the dreamers are planning their bridges, their perhaps more practical colleagues are thinking of tunnels. Tunnels also do their work of joining and bringing together, but they don’t seem to have the romance of bridges. Novelist JG Ballard put it best, when he was asked about the, then newly-opened, Channel Tunnel: he agreed it was amazing, but imagine . . . he said. Imagine if it had been a bridge.

In Ireland we have some pretty good bridges – although no world-beaters yet. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s plan to build the Hugh Lane Gallery as a bridge across the Liffey might well have been one, had it gone ahead. Instead, we have the beloved Ha’penny bridge spanning the Liffey, as well as, among others, O’Connell Bridge – actually two bridges side by side, and almost as wide as it is long. Further north there is the Boyne Bridge, which glows an ethereal blue at night, and, possibly the most beautiful of the new, soaring breed of bridges: the Foyle Bridge in Derry, which although it has to close in high winds, seems to be like an inspiration for the imagination to start to soar.

Opening later this year in this country is the Suir Bridge, which will help the N25 bypass Waterford. Regulars of Waterford’s traffic jams might find this thrilling enough on its own, but the Suir Bridge, designed by Spanish firm Carlos Fernández Casado, is a pretty glorious feat. The pylon holding the cable-stays took two years to build and is almost twice the height of Liberty Hall. Hang out with bridge-fanciers for a while, and you hear an awful lot of statistics and comparisons, as people wax lyrical about arches, spans, tonnes of reinforced concrete and numbers of rivets. Perhaps it’s their way of coming to terms with all that majesty and wonder.

Le viaduc de Millau France
Originally uploaded by filip42

It all starts to make sense when you come across a bridge like the Millau Viaduct. It’s the tallest in the world, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and it floats in the clouds as it crosses the Tarn Valley in France. It’s architect, Norman Foster, said he wanted it to have “the delicacy of a butterfly”, and people have said that driving across it is like “flying a car” – and they go there to do just that. Traveling to see amazing bridges has a distinguished history. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, and Thomas Telford’s Menai both drew the Victorian crowds when they were built – the Menai actually being a direct response to the Act of Union in 1800, as suddenly there was more traffic between the ports of Ireland and Wales. Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, has the additional, unfortunate distinction of being a spot for suicides, and plaques along the bridge display the Samaritans’ phone number. In 1885, however, a 22-year-old woman was saved from her plunge by her skirts, which caught the wind and acted as a parachute. Sarah Ann Henley lived on into her 80s.

While people travel to bridges, bridges have been known to travel too — famously London Bridge, which millionaire Robert McCulloch bought and transported, brick by brick, to Arizona in 1962. Ireland’s other newest bridge has traveled too: Santiago Calatrava’s Beckett Bridge floated, fully formed, into Dublin on a barge from Rotterdam earlier this year, and will be open for business in early 2010. I’m not completely convinced by the Beckett Bridge, the architect insists it looks like a harp, in deference to Ireland, but I think it looks like a great many of his other bridges – lovely, but by no means unique.

Meanwhile, Irish architects Heneghan Peng are building bridges abroad – one at Mittelrheinbruecke, in the Rhine Valley, on a site famed for its beauty; and the other, a footbridge for the 2012 London Olympics. Heneghan Peng’s German bridge is a thin sliver in the landscape, and like the best bridges, doesn’t detract from its setting. Some actually add to theirs – framing views in valleys, and giving new ones from their decks. One such will be Buro Happold’s winning design for the proposed Metro West across Liffey Valley – proving that sometimes man and nature can work in harmony. And finally, now is our last chance to see (for 2009 at least) the gorgeous, and a little scary, Carrick-a-rede rope bridge near Ballintoy, Co Antrim. It is taken down at the end of October/beginning of November every year, and goes up again in March.

Stunning And Romantic

Millau Viaduct , Tarn Valley: flying a car above the clouds in France.

Golden Gate Bridge , San Francisco: iconic, mist shrouded, it was once the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Oresund , Denmark/Sweden: connecting countries separated since the Ice Age.

Ponte Dom Luis: Porto, in Portugal, is famed for its bridges, but this one proves that iron work can be wonderful.

Clifton Suspension Bridge : turned Bristol into a Victorian tourist attraction.

Pont Neuf: the “new bridge” is now the oldest in Paris

Charles Bridge: begun in the 14th Century, a Prague tourist attraction

Rialto Bridge: all the bridges of Venice are romantic, but this one stands out.

Five-pavilion Bridge, Beijing: the Chinese are brilliant at bridges, and this one is very special.

Ponte Vecchio: the only one of Florence’s bridges not to be blown up by the Nazis. Hitler deemed it too beautiful.

Source: IRISHTIMES

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A bit of good news this morning. The RPA have with drawn there objections to the Ballymun Shopping Centre development. Finally the last piece of the regeneration of the main street of ballymun will get constructed!

Real Estate Opportunities (REO) said today it had secured full planning permission for the €800 million regeneration of Ballymun Town Centre in north Dublin close to the airport.

At 255,000 square, Spring Cross, as the new development will be known, is reputed to be the largest mixed use town centre permission that has ever been granted in Ireland.

The scheme includes 360 apartments, 60,000 square meteres of retail, 35,000 square metres of offices and 11,000 square metres of other uses including an 11 screen cinema, bowling alley, public library, creche and restaurants.

“This important achievement demonstrates the quality of both REO’s development portfolio and the ability of its management to create value. This project is a flagship in the company’s Irish portfolio and we are confident we can commence construction in 2010,” said Real Estate Opportunities’ chairman Ray Horney.

REO, which is 67 per cent owned by Treasury Holdings, said the project said that about 2,000 jobs will be generated during the construction period. It is expected that 8,500 direct and indirect jobs will be created once the scheme is completed in 2012.

Treasury Holdings has been responsible for a number of landmark developments in Ireland including Spencer Dock and the country’s first Ritz-Carlton Hotel at Powerscourt, Co Wicklow. It is also the owner of Battersea Power Station in London.

At the end of August, REO said that its portfolio declined by 6.2 per cent during the first six months of 2009 to CNY9.47 billion (£835.9 million).
Source: IRISH TIMES

I have yet to see the documents on An Bord Pleanala this morning, but eagerly waiting to get a gander at them.

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NATIONAL ELECTRICITY network operator Eirgrid yesterday got the green light for its planned €600 million power link between Wales and Ireland.

Eirgrid said that An Bord Pleanála has given it permission to build an interconnector between the east coast and north Wales that will transmit electricity between Britain and Ireland.

The interconnector will have the capacity to carry 500 megawatts of electricity, roughly the same amount as of that generated by a medium-sized power plant.

According to Eirgrid, this is enough power to supply 300,000 homes. The project will require an investment of €600 million. Its construction will create about 100 jobs and work will be finished in 2012.

The grid operator has hired Swedish company ABB to carry out the work. The firm manufactures cables, switches and most equipment needed by electricity transmission systems. It also designs and builds the systems itself.

The interconnector will link Deeside in north Wales and Woodland in Co Meath, where Eirgrid operates a substation. It will come ashore close to Rush, Co Dublin.

Eirgrid, a State agency, applied to An Bord Pleanála’s strategic infrastructure division for permission to build the interconnector. Eirgrid chief executive Dermot Byrne described the planning board’s decision as a major milestone, and added that the project will be delivered on time.

“As an island of five million people that is over 90 per cent dependent on imported fossil fuels for our energy, we have an immediate and pressing need to improve our security of supply, and to enhance our capacity to generate renewable energy. The east-west interconnector will help us do both,” he said.

The Irish Times

We shall see how it goes!

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