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E-Coli remains risk at Tramore Pier as swimmers advised to avoid

E-Coli remains risk at Tramore Pier as swimmers advised to avoid

E-coli contamination remains a risk at Tramore Pier, according to Waterford County Council, as a reminder has been issued for people not to swim there.

The warning was first issued last year, over fears that people could fall ill as a result of swimming there.

However, the council says all the other swimming areas are tested regularly and are fine to use.

Director of Services, Fergus Galvin says sewage could be causing the problems at the pier:

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"There's a stream that flows into the area there and that drains a lot of the greater Newtown Upper area of Tramore.

"Into that you have a lot of storm water going in there and there's a potential somewhere within that network, that there are some crossed connections where people may have inadvertently connected in some sewage outlets or otherwise.

"Then we get this kind of unpredictable and irregular pattern of contamination when we do testing of the waters there."

There is a small chlorination plant working to remove contamination from the water, however the council says that it is sometimes unable to cope with the volume of contaminated material that might be in the water at any one particular period in time.

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Mr Galvin says that efforts are ongoing to deal with the problem.

"We are looking at upgrading the chlorination plant at the moment," he has told WLR, "and moving it a little bit further up stream, in order to give more contact time for the chlorine to impact on the water.

"We have carried out some investigation works over the last year or two in terms of trying to identify the source of the contamination.

"But it's a massive task because there are hundreds of houses in the area.

"A lot of them would have storm water gullies coming off their roofs going into that and there are probably a small number of crossed foul connections... and trying to trace those when everything is underground - it's an exceptionally difficult task."

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