Residents of this scenic area of Tipperary now have higher level of flood protection

The residents of Marlfield in Clonmel now have a higher level of protection from flooding than they had two years ago.

That’s according to Michael Scully, a civil engineer with Tipperary County Council.

A flood monitoring programme and response plan had been put in place in the village and the level of protection would be even higher in the next two to three years, Mr Scully told a meeting of Clonmel Borough District.

He acknowledged that the main scheme in the village was slow, but said that plenty of flood relief work was taking place.
On the ground, it probably didn’t look like there had been a huge amount of progress, but in the background a lot of progress had been made.

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As well as the flood relief scheme, another aspect of the work is the Dam Rehabilitation Protection Scheme.
Mr Scully said that this was a unique scheme with unique issues, and it was proceeding very slowly. There were environmental and statutory constraints involved in the work, and they also needed expertise in the market.

Because there were very few dams in Ireland, an inspection had been carried out recently by a UK reservoir engineer, and his report was awaited. The engineer’s remit was to assess the current status of the dam and identify areas of concern to the county council.

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Mr Scully said that the council was in the process of securing ground investigation works on the dam itself. They hoped that this would allow them to choose a final option and proceed to the planning stage by the end of the year.
The ground investigation works would reveal if the dam could be structurally improved. If so, they would proceed to the planning process and make a submission to An Bord Pleanála.

Otherwise, if it couldn’t be improved, they would have to look at some kind of dam removal.
Whichever option was chosen, it would be two years at the earliest before construction started, and that is why the interim works to protect the dam and mitigate against flooding issues were so important.

Mr Scully said that the water in Marlfield Lake was at a very high level at the moment, because of heavy rainfall, and needed to be monitored. At the end of last year the council had received funding from the Office of Public Works (OPW) for some minor works.

A new sluice gate would be installed on the sluice channel to the west of the dam, and he hoped that this would be fitted in the middle of the summer when the level of the lake dropped.
He said that the new pipe network downstream of that sluice gate offered full protection from flooding to Jimmy Cronin’s house.