Shannon Superhighway

1.15. IRELAND'S PRECIOUS WATER

Enlightened politicians are urgently required to progress large-scale infrastructural concepts.

Dr Sir John Gray, a surgeon by profession, was such a politician.

Born in 1815 in Claremorris, Co. Mayo, he was an Irish Home Rule Nationalist, who actively promoted the Vartry Water Supply Scheme with some determination. This brilliant piece of infrastructural engineering still supplies 200,000 people in greater Dublin with clean drinking water via the Vartry Reservoirs, Callowhill Tunnel, 40km of trunk mains and the Stillorgan Reservoir. Dr Gray had the vision to understand that the Vartry Scheme would save countless Dublin lives from outbreaks of cholera, typhus etc which were endemic at that time.

The population of Cities, particularly capital cities, are growing at an increasingly rapid rate. Infrastructural projects which lack flexibility to meet this ongoing population change are a waste of scarce capital resources.

Note added 5.6.20 - Major Investment in public works, should be used to re-create jobs lost during the current Coronovirus pandemic. see: politics of change

A 21st Century Water Supply for Dublin

and more

A Shannon Estuary reservoir captures fresh water sufficient for 18 million people. Precious water which otherwise flows to waste in the saline estuary. Ross Eccles illustrates how this reservoir water can be used to supply Greater Dublin to the end of the 21st Century via multi-function flood/ship canals. Proposals for a similar reservoir in Cork Harbour and emergency water supply in the Wicklow Mountains are included.