CLARE COUNTY Council is to pursue the owners of a cargo ship that lost seven containers overboard in rough seas off the southeast coast in January, resulting in beaches in Clare being polluted with thousands of empty plastic butter containers.
Council staff have over the past two months removed hundreds of Kerrygold, Sainsbury and other branded butter containers from beaches along the west coast.
The local authority says it expects to seek to recover the cost of the clean-up from the ship’s operators. The 9,500-tonne MV BG Dublin was travelling from Rotterdam to Cork when it encountered winds measuring force nine and 10 off the Waterford coast on January 11th last. Seven shipping containers broke free from their strappings and fell into the sea about 20km off Tramore.
One of the containers was carrying a consignment of branded plastic butter cartons. In the weeks following the incident, aerial surveillance flights undertaken by the Coast Guard reported plastic cartons on the coastline between Dungarvan and Tramore.
In February, a stretch of coastline from Shanagarry to Ballycotton in east Cork was littered with hundreds of the containers, prompting a major clean-up.
Part of the same consignment continues to wash up on beaches in Co Clare. “The council is following a definite line of inquiry in relation to the incident. All waste- and litter-related matters are investigated by the council in accordance with the Waste Management Acts,” a council spokesman said. The ship’s operators, BG Freight Line, have not commented.