Council Bleaches its Rivers ‘To Combat Pollution’
Seriously, you couldn’t make it up!
You think you’ve heard everything. Seriously, after more than half a century on this planet, you reach the point where you’ve seen so many stupid, idiotic, short-sighted, selfish, cruel, callous, lazy, insane, criminal, greedy and downright evil acts that you start to think nothing can surprise you.
Then something like this comes along and reminds you that there actually is no limit to how low people will stoop.
It’s come to light that Waterford Council, in the Republic of Ireland, have been pouring bleach into local rivers since at least 1988. Let that sink in… That’s thirty-four years of deliberately adding bleach — which is known to be highly toxic to aquatic life — to the waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has demanded accountability, requesting a report from the Council to explain their actions, but only after the press published reports about the practice following concerns raised by Coast Watch Ireland and Inland Fisheries Ireland.
Why on Earth would anyone, let alone a public authority in a position of responsibility, do something as insane as this? Well, the reason given by Waterford Council beggars belief.
They claim that for decades, they have been aware of a ‘source of pollution’ upstream. Rather than identify and tackle that pollution source, which has been making children ill, some overpaid, under-educated officials decided that the ‘logical’ (i.e. cheapest) thing to do would be to simply add bleach to the river every year from May to September, to disinfect the river!
It’s thought that the municipal sewerage system, which flows directly into the rivers upstream, is the most likely source of the original pollution. This, in itself smacks of environmental hooliganism, but to address the issue by creating an even worse problem, presumably to try to save money, must surely border on criminally negligent.
Obviously, a major overhaul of the outdated and insufficient sewerage system is no small task and the cost might be phenomenal, but how long did Waterford Council think they could get away with sweeping the problem under the rug? Well, thirty-four years is a long time.
In case you are in any doubt about what we’re talking about here when we say ‘bleach’, this is actual sodium hypochlorite — the main active ingredient in household bleach such as Domestos or Clorox. We don’t know exactly how much of this stuff they’ve been adding to the rivers every year, but if it’s enough to sterilise the sewage…
Incredibly, after being found out, a Council spokesperson tried to excuse the behaviour by claiming that sodium hypochlorite is also used, as a 2% solution, to sterilise baby bottles. True as that is, you rinse out those bottles thoroughly after sterilising them, you don’t then let the baby drink the Milton cleaning fluid!
Anyway, now that they’ve been found out and their environmental vandalism has been exposed, Waterford Council have confirmed they will stop adding the bleach to local rivers, but the fact that they are still trying to excuse and justify the practice makes you question what sort of irresponsible lunatics we have put in charge of the asylum.
When you hear stories like this, you realise that it really is no wonder we’re all fucked…
