Cork 2040: Seeing through to a clear Blackwater
Cork 2040: Seeing through to a clear Blackwater
The Blackwater river in North Cork faces mounting pollution threats from human activities, but a shift in how we think about our waterways can revive the Avondhu by 2040, writes Dr Lucy Weir.
Welcome to the seventh instalment of Our Cork 2040.
Cork city is set to double in size by 2040 under the government’s Project Ireland 2040 plans, with huge impacts not only on city-dwellers but on the whole county.
With these ambitious plans comes lots of talk of “stakeholders.” This often seems to mean private developers, multinational employers and politicians. But who really holds a stake in the future of Cork? We believe it’s the people who live, work, raise families and face all of life’s challenges here.
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Our Cork 2040: Dr Lucy Weir
Dr Lucy Weir is a philosopher, writer, and yoga teacher, originally from Scotland and now based in North Cork. Her writing and facilitating focus on environmental issues. She spent a number of years volunteering in the global South. After moving to Ireland, the catalyst for Dr Weir’s further research, encompassing the wider philosophical and social issues of the ecological emergency, was the Corrib gas controversy. Her writing can be found in numerous publications and her website is www.knowyogaireland.com.
The beautiful Blackwater
The Blackwater, or Avondhu, shapes the landscape of Northeast Cork.
From its source in Ballydesmond to its mouth at Youghal, the river is fed from tributaries flowing from the long shoulders of mountain ranges like the Galtees and the Knockmealdowns, that line its 169 km, mostly easterly route.
The Blackwater is one of a number of rivers the Environmental Protection Agency has monitored with concern over the last few years.
As home to a significant proportion of the global population of now-threatened freshwater pearl mussels, the Blackwater has become a battleground between the conflicting interests of development and conservation.
Commenting on the 2020 Water Quality Indicators report, EPA Director of Evidence and Assessment Dr Eimear Cotter pointed to the threat of “nitrogen pollution from agriculture” in the Blackwater, among other rivers in the south and southeast.
Water quality indicates the capacity of a river to function as a living space by maintaining steady levels of dissolved oxygen, and showing resilience in the face of waves of pathogens, which, as we all know all too well, cause death. Still, different groups see the river differently.
Somehow, we have to balance our own species’ needs with those of others. To do this, we have to get a clearer picture of how things fit together.
Water is life
The loss of rare species decreases biodiversity, and diversity is vital for resilience. Decreased resilience leads to an increase in the intensity, speed and impact of changing conditions - floods and drought, and other effects of climate change.
If the river is more vulnerable to extremes, then so are we. Water is life, as we all know, but polluted water is dangerous, even deadly, and floods and drought, as we have seen increasingly across the globe this year, make it deadlier still.
Deforestation, herbicides and run-off
The Galtees and the Knockmealdowns that feed the Blackwater were thickly forested until as recently, some say, as 300 years ago, trees and their roots holding the uplands in place and filtering the water. Now, sadly, the uplands are largely denuded, and these feeder streams and rivers are frequently subject to silting as a result of logging of monocultures like Sitka spruce, often planted by the state forestry body, Coillte.
Current forestry management often includes the use of herbicides like glyphosate to suppress weeds in clear-felled areas. Although there are recommendations on spraying that seek to minimise the potential for run-off to enter waterways, weather is unpredictable and run-offs do occur.
Forestry is the first of three major players that contribute to deteriorating water quality, although dumping, poaching, and unregulated leisure are also significant culprits.
Farming’s “black water” in the Blackwater
Agribusiness has a huge impact on water quality. It is significant that Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority, is headquartered at Moore Park, just outside Kilworth.
Given Cork County Council’s projected 40% increase in population for the area by 2040, as outlined in the Cork County Development Plan, Teagasc’s state-of-the-art research facilities will play a vital role in aiding scientific investigation into increasing crop and animal production yields. However, all the research in the world will not allow us to feed ourselves if our waterways suffocate in farming’s “black water.”
“Black water” is animal faeces mixed with water, a euphemism “slurry” disguises. Spread on the land under recommended conditions, this makes a reasonably efficient fertiliser. However, run-off from slurry and fertilisers often ends up in rivers, as does detergent and other wet “waste.”
Farm animals are frequently fed high quantities of hormone-based growth promoters and antibiotics which, when imbibed by other species, especially fish, affect their sexual development.
Excess phosphates and nitrates lead to eutrophication (high algal growth) and anoxia (a crash in dissolved oxygen levels). Lack of dissolved oxygen means plants and animals that keep the river healthy are overwhelmed by algae.
Human “black water” concerns in Fermoy
The third main contributor to the huge decline in the Blackwater’s quality in North Cork is human black water, otherwise known as sewage. Calling sewage “black water” changes how we see it. We call the stuff we throw out after we have washed our dishes, our clothes or the car “grey water,” so there’s a precedent. Black water is dirtier. It contains particles of soil (faeces) which are sometimes imbued with the chemicals we take as medicines, like antibiotics. This heavily soiled water, just like slurry, feeds algae and bacteria, suffocating the species that keep the river healthy.
We build “waste water treatment plants” precisely to avoid depositing black water directly into the river, but Fermoy’s plant is built on a flood plain. During heavy rainfall - a not infrequent occurrence - excess flow is diverted into combined sewer overflows that deposit this “black water” directly into the Blackwater.
This, then, is the state of the Blackwater in 2021: a river darkened by our sewage, silt, run-off and slurry, phosphates, nitrates, detergents, dairy waste, microplastics, and rubbish.
To tackle the problem, the EPA suggests that the current system needs to be “improved.” I suggest we urgently need to overhaul how we see the problem.
There is no “away.” There is only downstream.
By 2040, with a projected (indeed, prescribed) increase in human population of 40%, we simply cannot afford to continue in the direction we are heading.
Language matters. How we talk affects how we see and how we deal with what we’re looking at. Firstly, water is not primarily either an amenity for sports, recreation and tourism, nor is it an ecological service designed for human use. Waste is a misnomer: there is no “away” when we throw things into the river. There is only downstream. Secondly, water is, primarily, what we consist of. Treating it as a utility fails to respect our complete and utter reliance on its quality as a river and as a measure of the quality of our own lives.
Changing how we see our rivers and streams requires a shift in focus. Changing how we understand systems will create changes in the design of systems, and therefore to how we use systems. The responsibility lies largely in the hands of those who create county plans, but, to paraphrase David Mitchell, each of our voices is a drop in a river that is made up entirely of drops.
In some senses, we can and do change how we talk about things. We are changing how we talk about race, or sex. We talk of a circular economy to acknowledge that end-of-use material needs to be repurposed as a resource for new products. We need to extend that to how we treat waterways. We know these are cyclical systems: evaporation from the seas creates rain that falls on mountains which then goes to feed our streams and rivers.
Composting instead of flushing?
Instead of creating black water, we need to recognise that we are land mammals, and we make soil with our waste. Sewage and slurry mix this and farm animal soil with water, but this is an unnecessary step. Our soil mixes best with other soil as compost. It can enter the cycle of earth, rather than of water which suffocates when too much soil is added.
Composting systems for solid human and animal matter are increasingly widely available, and require only some imaginative repurposing of current systems. Good composting systems disperse antibiotics and other chemicals into their less harmful constituent parts. The resultant compost can be spread on the land as a much more effective fertiliser than slurry, and with much less impact on water courses.
Composting instead of creating black water could be achievable by 2040, especially if intermediate designs are put into place now.
Reed and willow-based filtration systems are highly effective and would provide an ideal interim system for the Fermoy plant. These systems mimic nature, and by 2040, the field of research called biomimicry should have become the predominant approach to managing cyclical systems.
Biomimicry recognises that nature knows best. It’s a shift in focus from mechanical to whole systems thinking. It’s happening in all fields of research. We need to mimic river and earth systems in how they recycle matter.
The Blackwater by 2040: a river bursting with life
My vision for the Blackwater by 2040 is one of a healthy river with a thriving pearl mussel research school shining on the bank. The river's floodplains have been allowed to return to their original function: to provide a cushion against flood, and a reservoir in times of drought.
The marshland creates a natural filtration system and is bursting with life, photographers and scientists, schoolchildren, the elderly, hassled journalists and jaundiced teens all spending much needed solace among the reeds and buntings.
Upstream, the mountain-sides are a tapestry of native trees, creating better amenities for leisure, giving people access to forest walks, with coppicing instead of clear felling the new economic normal. Extreme weather events like flooding are mitigated, the soils are richer, and native species are coming back, great news!
Wildlife corridors buffer the streams and rivers, animal crossings keep the water clear. There is much more space for swimming, boating, angling, and a far stronger sense of coexistence between the river and the human community. People see the Blackwater clearly, as clear as the water has become, as a part of their lives.
None of this is pie in the sky. David Lee, farmer, beekeeper, angler, and advocate for clean rivers, has worked tirelessly for nature on the Farahy river with farmers, putting in bridges, allowing corners of fields to flood and fencing off the edges of the river. The results are beneficial for both farmers and rivers.
In my vision, David Lee will be Ambassador for Rivers, a position that would carry at least the weight of Ambassador for Freedom of Expression.
By 2040, we need to see waterways clearly, for what they are, for what we are. We need to understand and appreciate our reliance on the river that runs through the land we live on, and depend on. Changing how we talk about the river and what we put into it changes how we see ourselves, bringing us closer to seeing ourselves as that ever elusive entity: homo sapiens, the wise human.