Flooding presents huge strain on Lifford-Stranorlar MD resources
Recent torrential flooding episodes caused havoc in this area and forced residents to take detours to get to other parts of the town
Lifford-Stranorlar Municipal District is experiencing a huge strain on its internal resources to try to deal with the damage caused by recent storms.
Senior executive roads engineer, Claire McGeever told Monday's meeting its technical ability and manpower were being stretched trying to cope.
Cllr Martin Harley raised the issue when he asked Ms McGeever when she thought the Tops Road in Raphoe would be accessible again.
Recent torrential flooding episodes caused havoc in this area and forced residents to take detours to get to other parts of the town. The flooding created a massive crater in the townland in question.
Ms McGeever outlined what had happened and how they were trying to cope at present
"The Tops was closed due to a partial collapse on the culvert. Temporary repairs have been carried out and the road is now open again. A catchment analysis is being done in relation to that culvert to see if there's an issue in terms of capacity with the kind of flooding were are seeing recently but at the moment it's open and passable," she said.
She added temporary works were being carried out on other roads to make them barely passable.
"It is proposed to carry out permanent works to get them up and running again. A number of roads require emergency works and those are ongoing in quite a number of different locations. The funding isn't there for these works but there are some roads we can' not attend to
Discussions have been held with the department. Emergency works to make these roads passable and safe are being done but this will leave us with a deficit at the end of the year. The department will have a look at that expenditure to see what they may allocate to us as additional funding. It's not 100% clear at the moment what we will get."
Ms McGeever added while most of their existing budgets were already allocated the council had also been looking at where it had additional money was available and trying to divert it for ongoing work.
She explained that there had also been flood damage due to road crossings and at bridges but while significant work was required money for those not deemed as emergencies would need to be applied for through different funding programmes next year.
"We will be looking at what sort of budget avenues will be available next year to see if we can get some of those jobs funded. Our bridge section is working away in relation to all these locations and doing catchment analysis to identify whether the existing road bridges, crossings, culverts and pipes are sufficient or an upgrade is required so there is quite a lot of work going on behind the scenes."
She suggested they hold a separate workshop to provide the councillors with the detail involved.
"Of course, this has put a huge strain on our resources internally in terms of our technical ability to look at all of this and our ability in terms of our outdoor manpower to actually do these works on the ground but we're doing what we can as quick as we can," she added.