Sligo performs poorly in EPA report on air, water quality and waste
SLIGO County Council was one of the lowest-performing local authorities identified by the EPA in a new report which ranks local authorities in terms of their work on environmental issues such as air, water quality and waste.
Kildare, Dublin City, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Fingal performed the best in 2021 at contributing to national priorities around waste, water, air and noise, and relevant governance processes.
Sligo, Offaly, Mayo, Wexford, and Waterford performed the worst. Across the country, most local authorities performed well in some areas, but none performed well at all 20 national priorities. These include tasks such as septic tank inspections, tackling illegal waste, air quality monitoring and handling environmental complaints.
That’s according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2021 report published earlier this week.
The report, ‘Focus on Local Authority Environmental Enforcement’ identified the highest and lowest-performing local authorities.
No local authority ranked ‘strong’ or ‘excellent’ across five categories of water enforcement, but Leitrim, Meath, Monaghan and Wicklow met the required standard in four of the five areas.
However, six, among them Sligo, failed to meet any of the required standards for water.
The best local authorities at air and noise enforcement were Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Kerry, Kildare, and Monaghan, while Sligo, Louth, Offaly, South Dublin, and
Wexford were the worst.
Looking at waste enforcement, only four local authorities were considered to have been ‘strong’ or ‘excellent’ – Fingal, Kildare, Leitrim and Limerick – while six failed to meet the required standards across multiple areas – Kerry, Laois, Mayo, Offaly, Sligo and Wexford.
Cllr Donal Gilroy told Ocean FM the report was “disappointing” from a Sligo perspective. He said he would like to see how the grading was done that left Sligo in the five lowest performing local authorities.