Recently in Environment Category

Amazingly, a fire in derelict buildings in Benburb Street has disrupted Dublin’s LUAS light rail system for what will be a week tomorrow, Saturday 24th March 2012. Apparently, some of these building are listed for preservation. Therefore thousands of commuters and other public transport users are discommoded for a week and enormous costs are being incurred. There appear to be dozens of staff from the company that operates LUAS on duty to manage the disruption as well as possible. Very expensive and painstaking work is being done to make the buildings safe, while dismantling them to the minimum extent possible. These derelict buildings could probably have been leveled in a few days and huge unnecessary costs (direct and indirect) could have been avoided. Based on experience, the likelihood is that once made safe, the unoccupied derelict and buttressed buildings will be left indefinitely to grace the sub-skyline of Dublin city. Business cannot thrive in such an environment, valuable space is being wasted and a derelict area is unlikely to be safe for those who might wish to pass through.

I had been thinking about how one might take a sample of suds floating on the surface of a river. The photo to the left shows suds on the Liffey at Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland. It was taken on my mobile phone from the upstream side of the bridge at Newbridge, looking down on the water. The water level and the rate of flow on the river were quite low at the time: 16:53 24 September 2010.

With a small container on a string it would be easy to take a grab sample of the water. However, I felt there was a possibility the water itself was very pure and that the suds floating on top were of entirely different composition.

Yesterday I saw a a fly fisherman wearing waders in the river a short distance upstream from the bridge in Newbridge and at another time I saw a swan swimming there. They were both surrounded by these suds. I do not know whether or not the suds disturbed them. I just imagine that they did, because they did disturb me.

‘Suds on the beautiful River Liffey and a dog’ is a 39-second-long movie on YouTube with a wonderful actor in the starring role that highlights, presumably mild, pollution consisting of suds on the River Liffey at Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland. River pollution is an engineering issue that can and should be addressed. The technical failure to resolve the problem over an extended period of time points to a failure of regulation. This video was shot on 12^th September 2010 from the bridge over the Liffey at Newbridge, which is shown in the photo above. The pollution was mentioned by Jim McGovern at an international conference on sustainable energy and environmental protection in August 2009 (see http://arrow.dit.ie/engschmecoth/8/). The dog in the starring role swam unexpectedly into the movie frame and transformed a dull technical exhibit into something rather more appealing.