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Interviewees
Gerry Siney, chairman, River Shannon Protection Alliance
Pat Lysaght (AKA Mr Shannon), boat operator on the River Shannon
Angela Ryan, asset strategy manager, Uisce Éireann (Irish Water)
Derek Noud, assistant plant manager, Leixlip Drinking Water Treatment Plant
Peter Lantry, managing director Equinix Ireland
Transcript
Pat: OK. No Ger, Ger, get into reverse, eh, reverse there ... I'd say it's a while since you were on a ladder.
Ger: Laughs
Jennifer: So, I'm in Limerick, a city and county on the west coast of Ireland and in a kind of slippery situation, you might say.
Pat: Now put your leg over, your leg into that
Pat: Yeah, No, that's it. Keep holding on. Now keep holding on and steady yourself. Walk easy now, the way you won't be tumbling in ...
Ger: You didn't expect to be doing this today, did you?
Jennifer: And I have to say, dear listener, I did not expect to be climbing down a rickety – and kind of very slippy – metal ladder and onto a small, red motorboat with two octogenarians. All the while trying not fall into Ireland's longest river: the Shannon.
Pat: There is nothing to fear, Pat is here. That's what I keep telling people.
Jennifer: Pat Lysaght who just heard there is about to turn 82. He's a particularly lively man, full of quips and chat as he shepherds us onto the vessel.
Pat: I used to know a fella called Walk Easy... Walk Easy ... (Laughs). Do you understand our lingo?
Jennifer: Pat owns the boat and does some work on the river, guiding cruise ships and that kind of thing. But he's a bit of a jack of all trades really. At one point he was a printer, then a builder and he also owned a pet shop for about 5 years. Now he's supposedly...
Pat: beginning to retire at this hour of my life, if you know what I mean. Taking it handy.
He knows this part of the River Shannon like the back of his hand.
Ger: Pat is Mr Shannon. He's lived his whole life on the Shannon.
Jennifer: That is Gerry Siney. Gerry, or Ger, as everyone calls him, is 85 and is from about 10 minutes down the road.
Ger: I was born just feet from the river Shannon, well inside in Limerick. But it's the same. It's the same river. As it's been part of my life since boyhood.
Ger and Pat have known each other since they were kids. Ger would cycle down here, get in a boat and travel the short distance to the other bank or the ruins of an old castle that still stand on a small overgrown island just in front of Pat's bungalow.
Ger: Most of my misspent youth, youth were spent going wild on this very location.
Ger: Don't tell her the tales now ...
Pat: (Laughing) No, I was too young at the time.
Ger: You were and your ...
Having spent their lives and misspent their youth on the Shannon, Ger and Pat have a special connection to the river and the creatures that live in and out in
Ger: See any seals anymore?
Pat: Did you see the kingfisher Ger? He's gone in there.
They point out some other large black birds perched like sentinels on the parapets near the castle, spreading out their massive wings like they're about to hug each other. They're called cormorants.
Ger explains what they're doing...
Ger: And what they're doing here is they're drying out their wings and the body because too much time in the water.
Pat: You know, it's, an amazing thing. I never tire of it.
Jennifer: But Ger, who is Chairman of a group called the River Shannon Protection Alliance, fears all of this could be about to change.
Ger: All of this is under threat from the pipeline proposal. It's just there's no simpler way to put it on that.
Newsreel collage
Jennifer: I'm Jennifer Collins and in this episode of Living Planet I’m in Ireland exploring what is kind of an age old story that is unfolding in other parts of the world too. It’s a tale of rural-urban divide and tension of access, allocation and control of a particular resource. And that resource - perhaps unexpectedly in typically rainy Ireland is water.
Ger: Now, environmentally, it will be ruinous. The Shannon supports, countless forms of life. Bird life, aqua life. It features a number of European designation, special areas of conservation, special heritage area areas.
Jennifer: Ger is talking about the damage he and others in the protection alliance believe will be caused by a proposed 170-kilometer, multi-billion-euro pipeline that would take 330 million liters of water a day from the Shannon. The idea is to pump the water to the country's east coast to feed a rapidly growing population and industrial base in and around Ireland's capital, Dublin.
The Shannon: I am the River Shannon. An tSionainn in Irish, the original language of this island. Named for the Goddess Sionainn, granddaughter of the Sea God Manannán mac Lir, I was born when she journeyed to seek wisdom at the well of Connla. When she did, the waters rose forth, drowning her and transforming Sionainn into the Shannon with all the goddess's wisdom. I rise in humble beginnings in the northwest of Ireland in a small pool in an ancient, jagged karst landscape. I expand and meander for 360 kilometers through 11 counties splitting the island into east and west. In Limerick, I become tidal and, in the estuary, my fresh waters start to mingle with the salt water of the great Atlantic Ocean.
Jennifer: I'm back on Ireland's east coast, in a small, quaint town called Leixlip near Dublin. It, like other towns nearby, could benefit from some of the Shannon water if the pipeline is built. About 17,000 people live there. It's quite a pretty town, with lots of green space, a 12th century Norman castle, a few pubs and restaurants, a major US tech company and
Angela: So right now we're in the Leixlip water treatment plant. It's the second largest water treatment plant in the country and it produces on average about 210 million liters of water per day.
That is Angela Ryan, asset strategy manager at Uisce Eireann, the national utility for public water supply in Ireland. Uisce Eireann is just the Irish for "Irish Water." The utility will oversee the pipeline project.
Angela: Derek, our plant manager, is going to bring us on a tour of this water treatment plant that really serves about 40% of the entire population within the region.
Jennifer: As we walk through the water treatment plant, Angela explains that the country, for now, isn't water stressed. Ireland is definitely known for having a lot of rain. It is a never-ending source of conversation here. But the population on the east coast is large and growing and the water network hasn't really kept up.
Angela: When we're thinking about 1.75 million people, 85% of that population are dependent on a single river..
Jennifer: That river is the Liffey. It flows from the Wicklow Mountains out through Dublin and into the Irish Sea. And it's way smaller than the Shannon. It's also totally over-exploited. Some 40% of the Liffey's water is being extracted to supply the area.
So, there's no spare capacity or other source of water if anything goes wrong – like a pollution event, says Angela, which they are constantly monitoring for.
Jennifer: We’re in a long hallway with windows on one side. Assistant plant manager Derek Noud points out several small, glass tanks. I'm really bad at estimating sizes, but I want to say probably about 70 centimeters in length and not very wide.
Derek: Trout would have been kept in these tanks. And as the water came through, if the trout became unwell, there was a problem with the water.
Jennifer: Of course, the trout haven't been used for a long time for animal welfare reasons. But also because the treatment plant has, more modern tools for monitoring potential pollution events.
Even with all the monitoring, if there was a massive contamination event, like a catastrophic sewage spill upstream, it could eliminate the entire water supply for a third of Ireland's population, Angela says.
The east of the country is already drier than the west, where most rain falls. And as the planet heats up, studies predict the west will see more flooding, while the east will see more prolonged dry spells.
Climate change will also lead to more intense storms which can impact water quality. Angela mentions a storm in November 2019, which meant water coming into the plant was really cloudy.
Angela: So we had to alert 1/3 of the population of this entire region that we were running the plant over capacity during this event and that they shouldn't drink the water unless they boiled it. That has an impact
Jennifer: So Angela says the pipeline is needed because Dublin is dependent on one source of water that is vulnerable to both climate change and pollution. But critics say the pipeline wouldn't even be necessary if the utility plugged Dublin's leaky water system. Around 32% of water is lost in the antiquated system before it even reaches taps. Angela says the utility is investing in reducing leaks to 20% by 2030 but that
Angela: Even if we got leakage down below 10%, even towards 0%, we would still need a new project to bring in new supply into the region.
Jennifer: Uisce Eireann says it has looked at 100s of options to boost supply to the greater Dublin area, including other rivers, lakes and groundwater. But ultimately it deemed the Shannon the most viable option because ...
Angela: taking the water from the bottom of the catchment. So again, we would see this as the least environmental impact option that we could select.
Jennifer: Another reason is that it already has a large hydroelectric dam at the bottom, which stores, regulates and diverts the Shannon water. So Uisce Eireann won't have to build a new dam. The dam is called Ardnacrusha and is run by the ESB, Ireland's electricity utility.
Angela: We will enter into an agreement with the ESB that they will reduce their energy production to allow us to take that water. So there's no net impact on the River Shannon. Instead of the ESB taking that water for generation, we instead will take it for water supply. It's about a teaspoon of water out of a pint glass.
Shannon: Water is life. People have long known that and have left offerings along my banks and on my riverbed. I have provided with my drinking water, fertile floodwater and once abundant fish. People have settled along from before the times of the Vikings to the modern age. They have used me for travel and trade. My waters have been abstracted for electricity. I have been dammed, channelized, polluted with agricultural and industrial run-off. My alluvial forests have shrunk, so too have populations of eel, trout and Atlantic Salmon that once leapt up my waters to the exact place where they were born to bring new life into the world.
Jennifer: Pat lives on the natural course of the Shannon. He's lived at the same spot pretty much all his life where the river meets a canal built and run by electricity utility, the ESB.
Pat: This was blasted out. Dynamite, explosives, whatever.
The canal and the hydroelectric dam at Ardnacrusha were built between 1925 and 1929 by German company Siemens. It was the first major infrastructure project of the new Irish state, which had just gained independence from Britain. Thousands of men worked on dam, which was transformative for the island.
Pat takes us up the canal to the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric dam. The overgrown banks, which are about 20 feet above us, are full of trees and bushes. The rocks are strange, sharp angles made from the dynamite.
We approach the dam. An enormous concrete construction about 98 foot high. It once provided nearly all of Ireland's electricity. Today it's more like 2%. As we get closer Pat points out a row of grey boons floating on the water.
Pat: You're not supposed to be go beyond that point, right?
Jennifer: Some workers in high-vis jackets are walking around outside the power station and Pat wants to bring us as close as possible to the turbines.
Jennifer: But I'm a bit reticent. I don't want to get him into trouble. Ger, excited to get close kicks my foot gently.
We slip by the boons and Pat explains that just two turbines are running today. You can tell, he says, because just a small amount of water is trickling through the spillway above us down into the canal. And the canal itself is relatively still. If four are working ...
Pat: It's like Niagara falls.
Jennifer: The ESB, abstracts up to 94% of the Shannon's water at a weir called Parteen, about 14 kilometers upstream of where we are. It diverts the water down the canal for electricity generation.
But it’s also legally required to send at least 10 cubic meters of water a second down the natural course of the Shannon, which flows by Pat's house. That’s so the "real" Shannon doesn't dry up or get too low. The ESB controls the water levels a lake called Lough Derg just near the weir. The lake is popular with tourists and the boating set.
Pat points out a huge cement tower.
Pat: Before that all the fish were trapped. They couldn’t get up. They were dying here.
Jennifer: By the time the fish pass is built the damage had already been done. And it’s only gotten worse since then. Eel populations have plummeted. Salmon numbers moving up the Shannon scheme dropped from around 9,000 in the 1970s to about 1000 over the past decade.
Ger: That plant decimated the salmon, and a few other species also. The Shannon was one of the finest salmon fisheries in the world in the world.
Jennifer: The Shannon has already seen major damage because of the dam and is in poor ecological condition, say scientists. And the worry for Ger and the River Shannon Protection Alliance is that it could come under even more pressure if the water pipeline is built because...
Ger: it will lower the levels of the of the of the river.
Uisce Eireann says it wants to abstract 2% the Shannon's average flow. And that it will never take more than that. You'll remember Angela Ryan said it was like taking a teaspoon out of a pint glass.
Ger and Pat say siphoning off that amount is fine when there's a lot of rain and a lot of water in the Shannon. But not in summer or when there's a drought. And they wonder what will happen to Lough Derg, which is a protected freshwater lake fed by the Shannon.
Pat: It'll have to have some effect on the place I'd say.
Jennifer: There have already been instances in the past when levels on Lough Derg have dropped so much that fishermen and other lake users couldn't get out in their boats And locals like Pat feel ...
Pat: The pipeline – that's another thing now you know, what's that going to do to us?
But if Dublin wants water, they'll get it.
Jennifer: Pat is referring to a feeling among many outside of Dublin, particularly on the west coast, that regional development and resources are skewed toward the capital, where the government also sits. Ger and the River Shannon Protection Alliance believe the government and Uisce Eireann haven't properly listened to their concerns and proposals for alternatives ways to bolster the capital's water supply. The group also questions the government's future water demand projections for Dublin.
Ger: This pipeline is not needed ...
Shannon: I formed around ten thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age. The people of this island have kept the story of my birth alive in their mythology, o ghluin go ghluin – from parent to child – and have passed on the knowledge encoded therein. My waters and the other streams and rivers on this island brought the outside world to us. It was how people traded, how they fished, how they moved around the land. Others come from faraway lands, travelling on my currents, bringing with them new information. Many visited me and visit me still as a wellspring of new ideas, fresh thinking and inspiration as the Goddess Sionainn once did. Now, in the age of technology, people sit at laptops or on their phones, accessing information, trading, connecting with the world via streams of data.
Jennifer: But the Shannon pipeline won't just be supplying drinking water to the greater Dublin area. It will also go to industry. If you take hydropower out of the equation, some 72% of water abstracted is for industrial use, followed by 22% for drinking water. And most of Ireland's big industry is on the east coast. One of those industries – one that is booming in the country – is data centers. There are no figures for Ireland, but a study in the US found that 57% of water used for cooling in data centers is potable and could be used for drinking.
Jennifer: Ireland has 82 operational data centers. Nearly all of those are in and around Dublin. They're seen as a key new growth sector in Ireland – some 40 more have gotten approval. And whether you realize it or not, data centers make everything you do online possible – that could be matching with someone on dating app, streaming a TV show or buying a flight. Often, these hubs, full of rows and rows of servers, are tucked away in windowless, grey buildings in non-descript business parks.
Jennifer: Like one I've come to in Ballycoolin in North Dublin, for a tour. It's rare to get a look inside a data center.
But before I go in, I need to get through the high-tech security involving a biometric fingerprint reading, a camera... It's all a bit complicated ... well for me anyway, because technology is not my friend ... So I am here to meet with
Peter: Peter Lantry is my name. I'm the managing director for Equinix in Ireland.
Jennifer: Equinix is a US company with 260 data centers in 33 countries including Ireland. Tiny Ireland has become a bit of a magnet for data centers. Some say it's because of the country's young, highly educated workforce. Others say it's down to generous corporate tax rates. But there's another reason, says Peter.
Peter: Ireland is like in the Goldilocks zone. It's not too cold and it's not too hot, so Ireland is actually perfect for digital infrastructure cooling requirements.
Jennifer: Inside the data center – which is basically a grey windowless box – it looks kind of like a prison for data. We walk past rows and rows of server racks and cabinets in what look like massive cages. It's hot and noisy – which Peter tells me is
Peter: The noisier and the hotter, the more efficient it is actually because it means we are managing the cooling systems to the highest level of efficiency and using less electricity and less water as well.
As we walk into one particularly noisy room, Peter says
Peter: Now you've arrived into what is the cloud
Jennifer: You know those pictures you see depicting the cloud with two computers connected by a fluffy cartoon cloud? Yeah, it's not like that at all. It's all metal and plastic. Colourful wires and fibre optic cables run overhead, streaming out of what look like cassette tapes.
Peter: Each individual one of those fibres is the connection of one business with another business and one network with another network and that then connects globally to all the networks around the world.
And then we will make sure it's cooled in the most efficient way.
Jennifer: Keeping all of these servers cool is really important. It's like if your laptop or phone gets too hot – it's just not good for the hardware. The ideal temperature for equipment like this is between 18 and 27 degrees Celsius. So that brings us back to Ireland being in the Goldilocks' zone for data centres that Peter mentioned earlier.
I won't go into too much detail here about the various ways to keep data centre server's chill. But the argument goes that Ireland's mind climes and westerly winds mean data centres can take advantage of the ambient air to help with cooling. That means they can basically use air from outside the plant rather than energy-intensive AC.
Newsreel collage
Jennifer: There's a lot of controversy over how much water and energy data centres use for cooling. And although Ireland, is supposedly in this Goldilocks zone, data centres are still putting a massive strain on the grid. They used about 21% of Ireland's electricity in 2023. It was 5% in 2015.
But are they really big water users? That's where the picture gets a little more complicated. In Ireland at least.
Data centres tend to use most water mainly for peak cooling when temperatures are above 25 degrees Celsius, which doesn't happen often in Ireland. We don't have figures for Equinix's Irish water use, though they say it is small compared to bigger players. Figures from 2020 show large data centres owned by the likes of Google and Amazon can use somewhere between 0.5 million and 5 million liters of water a day when it's hot. The upper range is rare though but it's the equivalent to the water use of large town in Ireland with about 40,000 people.
Angela Ryan from water utility Uisce Eireann told me that Irish data centres are comparatively small industrial users of water and aren't putting major pressure on the system right now.
But that could change, particularly during droughts. Which, of course, will become more frequent as the planet heats up.
Plus, there's one other technology that is changing the game.
Enter Artificial intelligence.
Newsreel collage
By 2027, AI could account for up to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawals globally. That's around 6 times more than is withdrawn in the whole of Denmark in a year.
It's a conundrum Peter Lantry says Equinix is facing too.
Peter: Our cooling system isn't really designed for that. So what we have to do now is install a new more upgraded cooling system which uses liquid. And the liquid cooling is far more effective and you can go up to much, much higher levels of power use for that liquid.
Jennifer: Equinix is trialling water-based liquid cooling to deal with the shift in computing. Basically, the water stays in a closed loop and is reused. The company says that doesn't quote, unquote necessarily mean an increase water consumption. It could potentially contribute to a reduction.
Equinix says it is looking at other technologies to reduce overall water use. But even with those improvements, Peter believes Ireland is at risk of falling behind other countries in attracting new data centre business because economic and population growth are putting pressure on everything from water to housing and energy.
Peter: I think it's well known in Ireland that there's a deficit in infrastructure. Across all the different types of utilities that that needs to be looked at quite urgently, I would say.
Jennifer: Standing, in another noisy room beside some large water tanks, Peter says, companies have to minimise water use but the Irish state also needs to boost its water infrastructure and plug the leaks.
Peter: I think we should invest in that. We're not a poor country. I think once that's done and once the Shannon diversion happens – that's more than a decade in the mix. It just needs to be done because what that does is it allows all the homes and businesses which is where the main use of water happens, they need to be given the supply, the security supply of water. If that's where the most available water source is, then let's do it.
Shannon: I have been around for epochs, much longer than any living thing. But I am under pressure from all sides. To make electricity, to give water to more people, to farms and to the modern companies that have made Ireland wealthy, the animals that dwelled within me are disappearing and new invasive species have taken their place.
Can I continue to provide? The old stories warn that to tread lightly on the land, not to exploit its gifts. Without clean and flowing water, there can be no life.
Jennifer: Back at the Shannon, Pat is shouting instructions at Ger and I as we try to haul ourselves out of the bobbing boat and onto the rickety boat. We finally manage it after a few touch and go moments ...
Jennifer: We say bye to Pat, and Ger drives me back into Limerick city
Jennifer: On the way, he says that the River Shannon Protection Alliance are fine with the river being used – just in a way that they feel would be a more sustainable. They're proposing a significantly smaller pipeline that would connect in with other nearby water infrastructure and rivers as an alternative to the current scheme that would tap the Shannon...
Ger: nonstop, continuously....
Jennifer: But Uisce Eireann is not interested in a smaller pipeline. They are thinking big and aim to apply for planning permission in late 2025. Ger in the meantime has no plans to give up the campaign.
Ger: I was born and reared in Limerick and spent a lot of time on the Shannon. The Shannon has meant a great deal to us. When we were growing up and after we got grown up. What more can I say? Probably too much, but we will fight this pipeline proposal to the bitter end.
Credits and end