Ballincollig - Weir to Next?

Ever since I moved to Ballincollig in the wake of my parents’ death in 2017, one of my regular relaxation spots has been the Regional Park, a stretch of open fields, woodlands and grasslands along the south bank of the River Lee that encompasses much of the former gunpowder mills that used to be so important for the town. Many of the buildings that used to form the gunpowder mills have long since crumbled into rubble, with only a few still remaining clearly distinguishable as buildings. Among these ruins is one that actually used to be intact until a few years ago: The Ballincollig Weir.

These blast walls are some of the few remnants of the gunpowder mills that necessitated the building of the weir back in the 18th century.

The extensive site was massively reshaped by the building of the mills.

The proximity of the Lee ensured a constant and abundant supply of energy in the time before steam engines and electricity.

The weir was originally constructed in 1795 to provide a constant stream of water in the canals that crossed through the gunpowder mills complex which provided both on-site transport and energy for the mills by the way of watermills. Following the closure of the mills around the turn of the 20th century, these channels and the abandoned industrial area slowly turned into a vibrant forested ecosystem that was opened up to the public from the 1970s onwards. Then, in 2014, the centre part of the weir collapsed following some truly torrential rainfalls. Ever since then, it has been left in its damaged state, with only the worst of the debris being removed, and no one in power really giving a damn about it. As a consequence, the canal and mill races that criss-crossed the sites fell dry, killing off one of the few remaining wetlands in the lower Lee valley. 

While the collapse of the weir may have been great for kayakers, at least when the river carries enough water, the other effects were significantly more negative.

The canals and mill races that criss-cross the site all dried up.

In addition to providing power to the mills, these canals also provided an effective way to transport bulk cargo, such as gunpowder precursor products, through the site.

The water you see in that sluice gate seeped in from the river side of the gate. The rest of the park has been "dry" since at least 2014.

Now finally, six years after the collapse of the weir, there seems to be some movement. Ballincollig has since been absorbed into Cork City, at least from an administrative point of view, and the new lord mayor of Cork, who just happens to be from Ballincollig, raising the question just who absorbed whom in the takeover, wasted no time in reaching out to some bigwigs in the Office of Public Works and dragging them out to the site of the weir. And lo and behold, it now looks as if the OPW is indeed willing to repair the weir, reinstating all the dried-up canals and watercourses in the park. While I’m certain that this will have a significant impact on the local mosquito population, it is still very much a welcome development in my eyes, as it will likely be in the eyes of many locals.

Channels like these meander throughout the entire park. they would in the past have been full of water, forming a wetlands-like landscape that is sorely missing in the lower Lee valley.

Nowadays, these channels are only flooded after some significant rainfall event.

Not all channels that used to be in place are still accessible. This bridge sits on dry ground these days.

The original head race for the canal system at the western entrance of the park. The canals these days only flood when the river reaches critical levels here.

Yet for some reason, there seems to be some quite vociferous opposition to that, and I ended up having quite a heated debate about this topic earlier on Twitter. I mean, where else? Part of this opposition seems to be routed in the rather, shall we say chequered, history of the OPW when it comes to riverine engineering, with some of their latest flood protection projects in Cork going rather overboard on the whole concrete-walls thing. I can partially understand that aspect of the rejection of the idea. However, that heated debate I had centred around an entirely different issue. And it got me thinking, which is never a good thing. 

Basically, the person I was arguing with was calling for the weir to be removed completely to restore the original flow of the Lee, pointing to the work of AMBER International as a reference. AMBER, which stands for Adaptive Management of Barriers in European Rivers, basically does what it says on the tin. Partially funded by the EU and working with a number of leading universities, AMBER advocate for a river management approach that focuses less on the simple brute force approach of flood walls and dams and more on managing a river as a whole. They are not averse to keeping and even installing new barriers and walls if required though, something that has apparently not quite sunk in with my conversation counterpart on Twitter, who was seemingly insistent on having the weir removed altogether, ensuring an unimpeded flow of the river down to the weir at the Kingsley hotel, where the tidal reach of the Lee ends. 

While I can see where my counterpart was coming from, I can’t help but wonder if they went a little overboard in their argument. Granted, the presence of the weir in Ballincollig does present a barrier to migrating fish species and effectively divides ecosystems. And to be honest, if this had just been a weir like any other, built to simply control the flow of the river or to raise the water level to create better fishing conditions, I’d actually agree them about removing it. However, that is not the case in Ballincollig. The weir has been intrinsically linked to another ecosystem within the regional park, one that has been significantly disrupted ever since its collapse. Basically, the removal of the remnants of the weir would mean the final loss of the wetlands ecosystem in the park. It can of course be argued that said ecosystem was never a “natural” one but a man-made one, but I’m not sure I’d buy that. While it may initially have been artificial, it has since developed naturally for well over a century, ever since the abandonment of the gunpowder mills, and possibly in parts even when the mill was still operational. Should we really destroy an established ecosystem simply because centuries ago, the foundations were laid by humans? Especially given that there are effectively no more wetlands in the lower Lee valley at all?

There is a much bigger elephant in the room though. Actually, there are two, in the shape of the dams at Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid on the upper reaches of the Lee. Built in the 1950s, and with a power generating capacity of 19 and 8 MW respectively, these two hydroelectric power stations form a vital part of Ireland’s power grid, one that is even more important now that the last turf burning power plants in the Irish Midlands are finally being taken offline. More importantly for this debate though, neither of these dams are equipped with fish ladders, turning them from mere barriers into impenetrable walls for any species of fish. Any attempt at reinstating the natural flow of the river must take these two dams into consideration.

On a more general level, this debate raises a much bigger question though. How far should we humans go in minimising our effect on nature? It is very much obvious that the way we currently live is not sustainable anymore, you’d have to be wilfully blind to not realise that. And yes, some drastic steps are needed, steps that are more drastic than our current political leadership is willing to take, regardless of the country in question. Yet, I cannot help but feel that the same intellectual blinkering that is going on amongst the more conservative parts of the population has also taken hold among a significant number of representatives of the environmentalist movement. Humanity is, for all its failings, a technically advanced civilization, and any attempt to lessen our impact on our surroundings must take that into consideration as well. We cannot, and should not, erase ourselves from existence, and it would be foolish in the highest degree to completely give up our advanced status. 

One of the closing statements in the debate I had amounted to the past being a nice place, but not one that one would like to live in and was made in response to one of my arguments for the reinstatement of the weir. It is a statement that I wholly agree with, the past is gone and will not return, and we should be glad about that. However, we should also not erase it from existence in some misguided and quixotic pursuit of an ecological Elysium that can only ever be an unreachable ideal. As with all things, moderation, compromise and common sense are needed.