Dishing the dirt on our beaches; EU TEST FAILS FOUR RESORTS.Byline: BY TOM McTAGUE IF you go down to the beach today, you might be in for a nasty surprise - by the state of the water. A report out yesterday shows the quality of our bathing water has taken a battering from EU bigwigs who want us to clean up our act. And four beaches have been told to wave goodbye to any hope of getting top marks after failing a EU hygiene test. We're not completely lost at sea though - an impressive 97 per cent of resorts passed basic health standards and 81 per cent got top marks - but that's down from 91 per cent last year. It is the second consecutive year-on-year fall in the number of seasides to meet standards. But the downturn was blamed on last year's heavy rainfall during the summer. The EU's report said the rain caused more sewage to leak (programming) leak - With a qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads to eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come in. into the sea. Ireland's clean beach enforcer Dr Micheal Lehane said: "While the overall level of bathing water quality remains good the Environment Protection Agency is concerned a small number are consistently failing to meet the minimum mandatory standards." He also warned the EU tests are set to become even more stringent in the coming years. The four Irish beaches which completely failed the EU examination are: Balbriggan in North Dublin Clifden in Galway Na Forbacha near Barna in Galway Youghal in Cork Balbriggan beach has failed to meet the basic standard for four out of the past five years while Clifden in Galway has failed in three out of the past five. And although they all failed the test none of them were deemed so bad they had to be closed. The same exam in 1991 revealed 81.5 per cent of Irish beaches passed the top cleanliness Cleanliness See also Orderliness. Cleverness (See CUNNING.) Berchta unkempt herself, demands cleanliness from others, especially children. [Ger. Folklore: Leach, 137] cat continually “washes” itself. test but it is now down to 81.1 per cent. However, general water quality across Ireland is still above the EU average of 95 per cent - a result the EU described as "excellent". At the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels the European-wide results were defended. The EU's Environment boss Stavros Dimas Stavros Dimas (Greek: Σταύρος Δήμας) (born 30 April 1941) is a Greek politician, currently serving as European Commissioner for the Environment. said: "A slight downward trend can be observed for coastal areas, but bathing water quality remains high in the EU. "I encourage member states to continue to work towards full compliance of all bathing sites, inland and on the coast." CAPTION(S): BATHING BEAUTIES Bathing Beauties was a 1980s toy series of the Tonka company. The dolls were designed to be taken within the bath by children. Their distinctive feature was their hair, which changed color in warm water. ..and the stinkers Seaside Seaside. 1 City (1990 pop. 38,901), Monterey co., W Calif., on Monterey Bay, in a fruit region; founded 1887, inc. 1954. Its economy is based largely upon tourism. California State Univ. Monterey Bay is there, on the former site of Fort Ord. standards down 10% in 1 year |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion