Sir, – The river Slaney is a stunning natural wonder. It is also a special area of conservation, supporting abundant wildlife. Unfortunately, it is a river on the brink, and in a generation we could lose salmon and it may already be too late for the freshwater pearl mussel.
We need to move away from the shortsighted messaging that to dredge, straighten and engineer our rivers will solve all our problems. We must let our rivers be exactly what they should be – natural wild places.
Dredging 200m of a special area of conservation would be utterly pointless – it will simply refill with materials and water during the next significant flood.
As the old saying goes: “No river reaches the sea without first making peace with the rocks in its path.” Don’t dredge it, protect it. – Yours, etc,
RM Block
JONO HUGHES,
Chairperson,
Enniscorthy Tidy Towns.
A chara, – David Doran advocates for dredging as a solution to flooding (Letters, October 7th). While dredging rivers may provide short-term relief locally, it ignores river behaviour and is a simplistic solution to a complex issue.
Rivers are dynamic systems that naturally transport sediment and will actively fill sediment deficits when material is removed. Dredged channels frequently silt back up – sometimes within weeks or months – making for a costly, repetitive and unsustainable maintenance cycle. Moreover, by deepening the channel and clearing “blockages”, dredging speeds up the velocity of water flow. This reduces lag time and can significantly worsen flood peaks further downstream by dumping larger volumes of water into communities faster.
Islands, gravel bars, vegetation or other features found in rivers are natural manifestations. These features also provide habitat for river species that are constantly under pressure from human activities, not least from dredging. We dredge or “clean” gutters but it is no way to treat a river or its inhabitants.
While I have every sympathy for those who suffer from the impacts of flooding, people do not live “above a river”. Rather they are living on the river floodplain. Floodplains naturally hold vastly more water than the river channel itself, rendering dredging ineffective during heavy flooding.
With ever worsening flooding caused by climate change, a longer-term approach is to allow fields to flood rather than towns downstream and consider a strategic retreat where we cannot. – Is mise,
R Ó BRIAIN,
Phibsborough,
Dublin 7.
