Teresa Beattie is standing at her front door, Sarah in her arms and looking at what appears like a wet field.
She says that we were fortunate last winter. She recalls how Edward (82), and she had to leave their home in February due to flooding.
Their front path ran to a gate that opened up to a low road. A small stream running alongside her home ran under a bridge to go to the other side of road. It meandered through fields, a listed habitat, and eventually reached a turlough called Lough Funshinagh just west of Lough Ree (Co Roscommon).
But all that is changing now. The road has been raised by 10 feet using rock and hardcore. It is now higher that the top of the gate and garden wall in front of Beatties home.
The lake has covered the farmland directly across the road. Mature trees are dead in the lake and about a quarter the small spruce forest that faces the lake is brown and withered.
Since 2016, the turlough is no longer doing what they are supposed to: drain through fissures within the rock and provide water for winter rains.
According to the Geological Survey of Ireland Lough Funshinagh, has been distinguished from other turloughs in Ireland in that it does not have the opportunity to reset each year its flood pattern.
John Beattie, a Beatties neighbor and distant relative, explains how the rising floodwaters from Lake were coming up the small stream and under the bridge, and advancing upon cattle sheds as well as septic tanks. The road was raised four times by the council to prevent an environmental disaster.
The council installed heavy-duty pumps to carry stream water across the road to the lake while keeping it back.
The whole ensemble is lit at night by arc lights to stop cars from going down the bank from the elevated road. John Beattie states that he listens and checks on the pumps at night. A sudden failure could spell doom.
Previous disaster
Some people have been hit by disaster. A team of 60 council workers and locals fought day and night to place 10,000 sandbags before the home of the OMeara families in 2016.
A mound was constructed around the back garden to cut off a corner of Lake Erie. Submersible pumps were used again to return water to the lake. The mound saved the home, septic tank and property from flooding. However, the property was destroyed in a larger flood in 2018.
The lower rooms of Tom Carney’s split-level bungalow across the lake were flooded by a southwesterly blowing water in. The road was elevated to Carneys garden wall level by the council, but he estimates that about 180 acres of commonalities have been lost, including 60 acres in my case.
Laurence Fallon, a local independent councillor, is one of the victims. He says he has a history of working alongside the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) in order to protect the Lough Funshinagh Special Area of Conservation.
In the past, he moved his cattle off the land between high and low marks to preserve the reed-bed habitat of whooper swans.
It is no longer a habitat. The lake has grown from 600 acres to over 1,300 acres. The habitats of the swans are gone and they no longer come.
Fallon states that if one metre excess water in the lake could been removed overnight and pumped into Lough Ree, it would add only 44mm to its level. He adds that the excess water cannot be removed overnight and would take 60 days, which would have negligible impact on Lough Ree.
He stated that the lake will continue rising if it continues to drain naturally. If it rises 14ft more, it will flow overland to Lough Ree.
If that happens, the councillor warns that houses and farmland will be lost first and environmental pollution from cattle sheds, septic tanks, will then poison Lough Funshinagh.
