A housing estate in Killenard is still waiting to be connected to the public sewerage system, 35 years after it was built.
Each of the 11 homes in the estate has to rely on a septic tank to deal with waste which Cllr Paschal McEvoy said was “hard to credit”.
A proposal to have the ‘New Houses’ council estate connected to the public is currently being explored.
Cllr Paschal McEvoy raised the issue at the recent Graiguecullen-Portarlington Municipal District Meeting.
The council should ask Irish Water to connect the houses to the public sewerage system that passes the estate.
“For the life of me, I cannot understand understand why these houses were not connected when they were built,” he said.
Senior engineer Michael O’Hora replied that the council estate was built in 1982, before there was public wastewater system in place for Killenard.
He said the county councils water services section would have to carry out two technical evaluations to progress a proposal with Irish Water to have the estate connected to the public scheme.
The first is a level and topographical survey to determine whether a gravity connection can be used, although such a connection is considered unlikely. The second is a preliminary design for the network, a pumping station, if required , and a budget estimate of the cost of the scheme.
Mr O’Hora said the grants are available under the multi-annual rural water programmes, as long as the costs are not prohibitive.
A proposal could be made for creating a group sewerage scheme, which could be submitted to the relevant government department for funding.
The engineer added that six the 11 homes in the estate are social houses and an application can be made to Irish Water to have those houses connected to the public scheme, if the proposal is funded.
Pump
Welcoming the response, Cllr McEvoy said he believed that a pump will probably be needed.
“It that works, I would be happy with that solution, but allowance should be made for the fact that the estate should have been connected in the first place in terms of sharing the costs,” he said.
It was very “doable” to have the houses connected the public scheme, Cllr Tom Mulhall said.
“It is hard to credit that there are 11 individual septic tanks along that road and I don’t think any new planning development would allow that. They were built before the others and are nearly the oldest houses in Killenard,” Cllr Mulhall said.
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