The Skibbereen Flood Scheme focused on preventing flooding from the main river, the Ilen, its tributaries while also taking account of tidal effects.

That scheme is substantially complete and has served this purpose well. During the delivery of this scheme, a number of areas in the town were identified were surface water drains could have had the potential to cause flooding. One of the locations identified was the “The Cutting” just off Bridge Street.

The OPW provided funding for a minor works project to construct a screen chamber where the overground drain entered into a piped drain. This entailed construction of a large concrete chamber with a specially manufactured screen arrangement. This part of the project was interrupted by Covid 19 but is now nearing completion with screen installation currently underway. The screen was completed and due for installation this week with the entire process expected to take another week to complete.

Unfortunately it was not possible to complete this work before last night’s unusually severe summer storm, where the rate of rainfall reached 40mm an hour resulting in exceptional rainfall which overwhelmed the storm drain system at ‘The Cutting’ with the run-off overflowing onto Bridge Street causing flooding to a number of premises in the early part of the night.

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