Clean-up of river in Mayo town will be 'complex'
Cllr Harry Barrett (left) and Cllr Blackie Gavin both raised the issue.
A number of people have made complaints about the state of the Castlebar River, according to a local councillor.
Independent Cllr Harry Barrett raised the matter at last week's meeting of municipal district councillors when he told council management:
“A clean-up [of the river] is called for. I know it is a big operation but what can we do?”
Cllr Blackie Gavin supported the call, saying that the local Tidy Towns group had made efforts to clean the river.
“Two years ago we had an assessment done and the plan was to clean up the whole river. We applied for a flat-bottomed boat, we were unsuccessful, the funding went south. It cost €8,000 and we had about €4,000.
"If we can get the funding we have a team ready but the amount of paperwork we had to do as a community group to get the funding back then, we said never again. What we need is for the Municipal District to get the funding. The river is gone wild and dirty and there’s a lot of stuff in it.”
Head of the district Head David Mellett told members: “A river clean-up is dangerous as you are dealing with a flow of water. It is complex, and also you do not want to interfere with the aesthetics, so we are looking at doing a collaboration on this with the [council's] environment section.”
