Craic On

This letter was sent a while back but no reply has been received and so Enda Craig is demanding an answer.

Dear County Manager,

On behalf of the Community For a Clean Estuary i am calling for an investigation into the planning notice from Donegal Co. Cl. which appeared in the Donegal News on Friday Jan. 9th 2009.

The areas of concern are as follows:

1. Please explain why this planning notice appeared only in a newspaper which is not included in DCC’s own list of a ‘ locally circulating paper’ appropriate to the geographical area of Moville/Greencastle in the Inishowen peninsula.

Such a decision had the effect of making the relevant information unavailable to the local community.

Surely this is unforgivable considering the fact that DCC, having made the rules/list, then deliberately and cynically ignored it, totally in conflict with the requirements of the Aarhus Convention re the community’s right of ‘Access to Information.’
2. The same planning notice contains the following statement ‘ A proposed discharge of Waste Water to Lough Foyle from an upgraded Secondary waste water treatment works at Carnagarve ( National Grid Ref. 262763 438553 ) ‘

Can you please explain why such a statement was included in this notice considering the fact, that in the first instance, no such secondary waste water treatment works has ever existed in the townland of Carnagarve thereby making it difficult to see how it could be upgraded.

It might seem that DCC was attempting to include the possibility of obtaining a discharge licence, in relation to the planned Moville/Greencastle WWTP, by cynically inserting mention of it into a licence application for six untreated discharges at the town of Moville.

Either way, in the interest of transparency and the truth, an investigation is urgently required to explain this bizarre sequence of events.

Yours sincerely,

Enda Craig Spokesperson CFCE