City Council to seek storm aid from State and EU

THE City Council will be applying for State/EU aid to help foot the repairs bill in the wake of the New Year storms that left a trail of damage across Salthill.

A re-instatement of the coastal walkway along the edge of the golf club at Blackrock and repairs to the Leisureland complex, seem likely to the most costly parts of the restoration plan for the area.

Sections of the main Salthill Prom have also been damaged, while repairs have also to be carried out in the Silver Strand area.

City councillors will be presented with a preliminary report on the damage caused by the storms of last weekend, at their meeting in City Hall on Monday evening.

“The report will cover such areas as the City Council’s preparedness for such an event, our on-the-spot responses to the storms, details on the scale of the damage and an assessment of the work that now needs to be done,” said a spokesman for the City Council.

He said that the coastal walkway from Blackrock to Blake’s Hill had been completely destroyed and would require significant work to restore it while an assessment of the damage caused to the Leisureland complex was ongoing.

 The City Council will also be taking ‘a fresh look’ at their car-park close to the Atlantaquaria, given the series of recent floods that left cars marooned there.

“This is a car-park that is very prone to flooding at certain times of the year. It is an area that was reclaimed from the sea and, as well as over-topping, the waters at times also rise up from the ground,” said the spokesman for the City Council

Meanwhile a string of businesses along the Prom and also in the Spanish Parade/Flood Street areas of the city are also this week counting the cost of last Friday morning’s tidal surge.

The City Council said that the Mutton Island sewage treatment plant and causeway had ‘stood up very well’ to the ravages of last weekend’s storms with hardly any damage caused.

Meanwhile local climatologist, Dr Kieran Hickey of the NUI Galway Geography Dept, said this week that central Government would have to devote more resources to flood defences in coastal cities like Galway.

“With sea levels due to increase by over a foot between now and the end of the century, the problem of coastal flooding is going to get a lot worse. It is an issue that has to be faced up to by central Government,” said Dr. Hickey.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.