SEWAGE. Eight million gallons of raw sewage flows into inner Galway Bay very day. An appalling statistic. The discharge of untreated waste from a large and expanding city continues while the location and type of a new sewerage plant has been haggled over for more than 20 years.
To explain the background would probably require the same level of documentation as the beef tribunal. The average Galwegian wants an effective treatment facility within the shortest possible period and has little time for the environmental wrangle that has built up around the issue.
Galway Chamber of Commerce, besides its concern about the business implications, sensed that wish and has tried to ease away rather than break the impasse. Its chief executive, Mr Jarlath Feeney, and vicepresident, Mr Liam O'Connell, with what seemed like breathtaking innocence given the extent of stale mate, recently set about finding consensus.
Three basic objectives were agreed without favouring any side: 1. To get a treatment facility, constructed in the shortest possible time with the best value for money, which meets environmental considerations; 2. To raise the issue to the top of Galway's political agenda; 3. To find ways to break the stalemate and commence construction.
They met key groupings such as Save Galway Bay, which opposes an above ground plant on Mutton Island in the bay, residents associations and Galway Corporation, which advocates such a design with a linking causeway - an option not favoured by the Department of the Environment.
Surprisingly, Mr Feeney is upbeat and reports some progress. The groupings "have stopped dealing with each other via media press releases". Some have met across a table.
The next step is to travel together to Newcastle, Co Down, to visit an underground treatment plant.
Galway, he says, has finally embraced a process of consultation, similar to that deployed by Dublin Corporation when it drew up plans for proper disposal of the capital's sewage. Consensus, he insists, is now possible.