*Patrick Blake and his wife Eilish beside him. Photograph: Eamon Ward
HOPES FOR a growth in Liscannor’s population and available services is growing following the addition of a €7m wastewater treatment plant.
For close to three decades, Liscannor has been trying to improve its wastewater infrastructure and now the discharge of untreated water to the sea is a thing of the past giving locals optimism that the North-West Clare location will experience a bounce in development.
Patrick Blake who ran the Captain’s Deck restaurant and Liscannor Village Hostel alongside his wife Eilish were very pleased to see the investment. “We’ve been trying to get this project off the ground for over ten years, a thing that helped a number of years ago was when the pipe burst and it blew into the air, we called it the geyser, it highlighted exactly what the problem was, before that it was hidden because it was underwater, you couldn’t see it unless you were a surfer or fisherman. Today is a fantastic day for Liscannor, there has been €7m spent on a project for a small village like Liscannor, we’re very proud of the fact that Irish Water contributed this project to us”.
Damage had been done to Liscannor’s reputation with previous inaction on the project, Patrick admitted. “It was horrendous, it effected everything, Liscannor was a no go, it damaged tourism, it damaged everything, nobody wanted to come here. The geyser was known, there was a backlash, some people I shouldn’t have said anything but I was on a mission to get it sorted. This is a marvellous help, you will only see growth, development and people talking positively about Liscannor from now on, people will be back in the harbour at Liscannor and swimming, it had disappeared for thirty or forty years, people wouldn’t come near the place”.
In August 2015, Liscannor garnered national headlines when the geyser of sewage was spotted gushing from a pipe, “the geyser went 24ft high and it was 24ft of raw sewage,” Patrick recounted.
Eilish noted, “It was the first thing that greeted you in the village was the smell”. Patrick added, “Along this road when you entered the village you got the smell, the wind as we know it blows directly from the septic tank, it was only a septic tank for a whole community with two hotels, four pubs and all the houses there, it did a lot of damage”.
Liscannor native Patrick is confident that the investment will be the start of a new era for Liscannor. “There’s bound to be an increase in Liscannor’s population now and people will come to live here now, there will be houses built and people will live here, the population will increase, the services and everything will become better”.
