REPAIR WORK on quay walls in Cork damaged in last year’s heavy flooding, which caused an estimated €100 million worth of damage to the city, is expected to begin before the end of January.
A Cork City Council spokesman said a tender had been accepted for repair work to the quay walls at Grenville Place near the Mercy University Hospital following the receipt of tender bids on October 31st.
More than 20m of quay walls along the north channel of the river Lee at Grenville Place were demolished when floodwaters from the south channel of the river Lee flowed through the Marsh area of the city and back into the north channel.
The heavy limestone blocks were unable to withstand the pressure of floodwaters building up on the street side and were knocked back into the north channel of the river at Grenville Place where they have remained for the past year.
Cork City Council received a €900,000 allocation from the Office of Public Works (OPW), from its minor flood relief works scheme last June, to carry out remedial works on the quay walls and consultants were hired to prepare detailed specifications.
In October, Ian Winning, senior executive engineer of the road and transportation directorate at Cork City Council, indicated repair work on the quay walls at Grenville Place was expected to last 30 weeks.
The council has provided additional funding to allow repair work to be carried out at a further nine locations including on Sunday’s Well Road where a portion of wall also collapsed during the November 2009 floods.
Meanwhile the OPW, which has responsibility for the implementation of the Lee catchment flood risk and assessment plan has confirmed design work for a number of protection works will be completed next year.
According to the OPW, a joint steering group involving itself, Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the ESB is looking at both short- and long-term actions to manage the risk of flooding in the lower Lee and Cork city.
The group, through the OPW, is in the process of procuring consultants to further develop the measures proposed to provide protection to Cork city and this design work should be completed by the end of 2011, said an OPW spokesman.
Already, the office has met with the ESB. The electricity operator has lowered its winter spill levels by 0.5m at both Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid dams which will enable it to spill more water in advance of heavy rain to increase reservoir capacity.
“These measures will have some beneficial effect, the extent of this depending on the size of the flood. The benefit would be marginal for larger floods but could be more significant for smaller more frequent floods,” said an ESB spokesman.
Burst pipes leave Cork homes with no water: page 4
