How about a new island for Dublin Bay?

Now there's a thought.

This might just be the answer to the challenge that Dublin City is facing over what to do with almost a million tonnes of spoil from the bottom of Dublin Bay. A new island might just be  what's needed.

It's part of the final phase of what is known as the Dublin Bay Project. This is an ambitious plan to improve the water quality of Dublin Bay by improved waste water treatment, and building a pipe to send some of the waste water further out to sea.


The Liffey Estuary was designated as a nutrient sensitive water body by the Department of the Environment in 2001, and so the city has to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that discharge into these waters close to the shore. The plan is to invest in further sewage treatment at the Ringsend Waste Water Treatment plant, and to construct an underwater tunnel four and a half metres in diameter that will discharge the treated sewage nine kilometres out into Dublin Bay. This is not cheap. It will cost around €222 million to build, and around €3 million per year to operate.  Dublin City Council made an application to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to construct the works and dump the spoil at sea. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)  estimates that the rock spoil from the  excavations will be in the order of 847,500 tonnes, or around half a million cubic metres in volume. In April 2013 Dublin City withdrew their Application because some of the documentation regarding assessments and environmental impacts was not received in time to allow members of the public to make observations. 

An other proposal put forward in the Environmental Impact Statement is to truck the waste through Dublin City for re-use or disposal in landfill. This would involve thousands of truck movements and wouldn't be that popular an option from those who live close to the proposed route. 

Maybe now is the time to consider an alternative approach?

I'm wondering could we carefully place the the rock spoil out at the edge of Dublin Bay on top of the Burford Bank and create a new island.  the Burford Bank is the vertical bar that can be seen on the right hand side of the chart above. The water is fairly shallow there: only about three fathoms or five and a half metres deep at the lowest tide. Arranging the spoil in a ten metre high mound resting on the sea-bed could produce a new island ten kilometres to the east of Ringsend. Such an island could be an amenity that Dubliners could sail, motor or row out to on a summers evening, you could even plant a few pine trees, put in a pier and and a few picnic tables. The island itself might be roughly one hundred metres in diameter, with a rock reef to protect it from erosion. The area around the island could be designated as a marine park, and might protect vulnerable marine species from over-fishing in the water s nearby. Needless to say there'd need to be an architectural competition held to come up with the best design for the project. It could be a great way of celebrating the improvement in water quality in Dublin Bay that would result from  the new outfall pipe. Of course the underwater hydrology would have to be carefully considered, but it might have a secondary function of helping to protect vulnerable coastal areas such as Clontarf from Easterly gales. Any proposal would have to respect the OSPAR Convention that protects the north-east Atlantic from pollution, as well as the various European Union Directives that protect our coast.

What would such an island look like? Well, here's a link to a similar island  located a few kilometres away from Copenhagen in Denmark. There's also a useful article by Wheeler, Walshe and Sutton from University College Cork on the seabed of Ireland's east coast near Dublin here, and some seabed mapping from the Celtic Voyager seabed surveys here. Currently the City of Amsterdam is building new islands by using rock and sand from dredging shipping channels. It's just an idea, and something that perhaps the Dublin City Council and the EPA could consider in their deliberations in advance of a new application for Dumping at Sea.


In 1801 Captain William Bligh, of Bounty fame surveyed the Liffey Channel and proposed extending the harbour walls so that ships could travel safely into Dublin Port. As a bonus Bull Island was created. Perhaps today’s plans to upgrade Dublin’s sewage treatment could give the city an amenity that would improve Dublin for the next two hundred years.  If we’re going to spend €220 million on Dublin’s sewage treatment upgrade, then let’s do something interesting with the waste rock and mud. In my mind a new island sounds like a good idea. 

Currently the options for dealing with the waste from digging the 9km tunnel are to make it disappear, just like Steve McQueen did in “The Great Escape” where the earth from digging an escape tunnel was spread all over the prison yard.  The alternative is to truck it out through Ringsend and the Dublin Port Tunnel to a landfill site. I’m suggesting a third option, and it might be cheaper, the building of a new island in Dublin Bay.

Thinking outside the Square(s)

On 4th October 2012 I took part in a Pecha Kucha debate about the future of Dublin's Georgian Core. The debate took place in the old Green Street Courthouse in central Dublin and was chaired by Fintan O'Toole. It was part of the Open House weekend that's been run by the Irish Architecture Foundation over the last few years.

I worked with Gavin Daly from NUI Maynooth on the presentation. You can see the full set of slides over on Slideshare, but here's the accompanying text that should be read in conjunction with the visuals. That first slide shows Mountjoy Square in Dublin 1.


1.
That’s Mountjoy Square a few days ago.
His Mum warned him against middle-aged men with cameras.
Mountjoy Square’s fun, it’s got a creche, table tennis, football, basketball.
It’s got a gutsy Lower East side meets Spanish Harlem feel to it.
Thanks  Gavin for his input. He’s studying in Maynooth, but lives close to Mountjoy Square.

2.
Affluence and Disadvantage, You’ll find rich and poor on both sides of the River
That’s from a map produced by those bright people in AIRO, Maynooth.
The problems of Inner Dublin don’t all stem from Inner Dublin.
Outer City people make decisions about Inner Dublin.
They don’t live here, they don’t want to live here, and that’s part of the problem.

3.
It’s funny the way planners zone the space occupied by buildings or empty sites.
But not the spaces between buildings.
It’s lashing rain, but in the distance, two old fellahs are having a chat on a bench.
I like that about Dublin.

The Problems of the Georgian Core include the following:

-Outer cities and  inner city

-Uncertainty, vacancy, transience

-Poor definitions of public realm in Irish Law

-Wrong experts control outside space

-Over-regulation, patchy enforcement

-Dominance of vehicles and traffic

-Green spaces lack diversity and public input

4.
Shrinking Cities, there’s a lot of them, from Detroit to Leipzig
On the right is  Ireland’s GDP over the last few years, an upside-down Nike swoosh.
No-one really know if Dublin will expand or contract
We need to prepare for both.

5.
That’s the An Taisce –Buildings at Risk study on Facebook
Some of the buildings are owned by the Council.
The Council.
Fire Certs, Protected Structures, Mains Drainage. The List goes on…
Whose job is it in Dublin City Council to say:
“I’m from the City, and I’m here to help.”

6.
That’s Parnell Square, but it’s not a Square, it’s a roundabout, it’s a traffic gyratory.
Streets are the places where old Ireland meets new Ireland.
We need to talk, but we need to be able to hear ourselves.
The new Public Realm Strategy is great, but who’s in charge?
I’m worried that the Roads and Traffic will continue to call the shots.
Wider footpaths can make a big difference.
(It’s crazy that) Road Traffic Act, 1961 defines a Public place as any street, road or other place to which the public have access with vehicles whether as of right or by permission and whether subject to or free of charge.

7.
Only one of the four junctions on Fitzwilliam Square has pedestrian signals. Not this one.
You can wait 50 seconds for a 5 second green phase.
I watched the guy with the bag wait for 5 minutes.
Someone needs to call the shots.

8.
At Merrion Square, mews gardens have become car parks.
Your home can be overlooked 24:7, Not for me thanks.
Digging up tarmacadam isn’t cheap, but a tax on surface car parking
Could make a world of a difference.

9.
There’s no crossing from the Oscar Wilde statue to his former home
Sometimes I stop and watch Americans dodge the traffic,
How about a pedestrian signal there, and from the National Gallery straight to the Park.
Maybe a coffee kiosk by the playground where you meet your friends and watch your kids.
Little things on a low budget could make a world of a difference.

10.
You can see the Ghost buses from here…You actually can. They’re the purple blur in the distance.
Our buses have some of the most stunning views in Dublin.
It’s time to remove city centre bus depots. It’s time for Dublin Bus to move on.
Mountjoy Square, Broadstone, Grand Canal Dock, and Conyngham Road.
This  could be a city farm at the centre overlooked by own door offices.

11.
This is Container City in London’s Tower Hamlets.This is a scheme from across the water, old shipping containers re-used.
It could be Mick Wallace’s empty site on Russell Street.
Or the Dublin Bus Site that stretches down to Summerhill
If they work, great, if not there’s always an angle grinder
Empty spaces, under-use, parking gnaws away at the soul of the city.

12.
There’s a lot of under-use in the Georgian Core.
Here’s the Pioneer Club on Mountjoy Square.
At Merrion Square the Apothecary’s Building lies vacant.
Could we think the unthinkable?
Could the city lend vacant buildings to people like you?

13.
In Leipzig, Germany, there were lots of empty old flats and buildings in the 1990s.
There, the City Council tuned them over to homesteaders.
“Guardian houses” allow homeowners and renters to use vacant houses.
No rent, but you pay the utility bills.  In return you renovate.
It saves old buildings, reduces vandalism and ongoing decline.
We need some ‘Guardian Houses’ in Dublin.

14.
It’s 350 years Dublin Corporation drew up leases for St. Stephen’s Green:
Beaux Walk, Monks Walk, Leeson Walk, French Walk are highlighted
In 1732 the Walks were described as ‘wide and smooth’ .
Let’s make some more Walks.
One less traffic lane is one more walk.

15.
Now What?
Here's what we need to do:-Define the public realm
-Re-think who is in charge
-Co-ordinate Local Authority leadership
-More public space less traffic
-More green stuff, less parking
-Land-banking, temporary uses
-Help out homesteaders

There’s no much money, but there’s creativity to beat the band
A vacant lot drags everything down.
How about some grass, a bench and an apple tree?
Maybe new laws are needed, or maybe we just need more resolve.
“Try again, fail again, fail better”
Let’s take that chance. 

Thank you