Are you interested in getting involved in protecting Celbridge's local streams?
The Celbridge River Catchment Trust is thus looking for interested people, volunteers and citizens to participate in citizen’s science projects to help to research, evaluate, monitor, map the various threats to our streams, disseminate the findings, produce informative aquatic signs, as well as to look for solutions to improve our streams ecological well-being to ensure clean(er) drinking water sources and a healthy aquatic & riparian biodiversity.
Kildare County Council with the help of the UK River Trust is in the process to establish a River Liffey Trust and we hope that Celbridge River Catchment with the help of the Communities and Water officer will become a part of this much needed establishment.
Why the Celbridge River Catchment Trust was set up
Celbridge River Catchment Trust was established in the beginning of 2019 in order to highlight the dire need for cleaning our streams that flow into the Liffey - a big ‘Thank You’ to all those many enthusiastic volunteers and the Salmon Leap Canoe Club for their massive input in this endeavour!
The numerous streams around Celbridge, and the Liffey, are sources of our drinking water and have EPA protected drinking water status and are therefore invaluable to our environment and us.
According to www.catchments.ie (EPA), small streams represent 77% of the length of Irish river networks amounting to 84,000km of channels less than 3m in width. However, these small streams are rarely monitored, although they, as the vascular system to our rivers, provide us with many necessary benefits such as vital water for drinking, industry and agriculture. They control the supply and transport of nutrients, regulate river flow downstream, and contribute to groundwater recharge. They are responsible for aquatic ecosystems withing the channels and downstream of the rivers, control the flow of sediments, nutrients, pollution, toxins from upstream. They also provide the local riparian environment with aquatic biodiversity, spawning and nursery habitats for aquatic fauna, especially the endangered salmon. This is locally important as the Liffey is a salmonoid river.
The streams around Celbridge however also contribute greatly to our leisure activities and culture.
Water and its aquatic habitat are the most fragile of all the ecological environments due to the soluble actions of water molecules. And thus, unfortunately, there are many threats to our small streams in Celbridge, such as waste water pollution entering the channels, illegal pesticide spraying, invasive flora and fauna species, agricultural run-off of effluent, pesticides and nutrients, disturbance of land adjoining the streams with sediment increase, low dilution capacity, and change of water volume and increased water temperature due to climate change, to mention a few.
How to get involved
For those who are interested, please drop a line to celbrivercatchment.trust@gmail.com or to the Green Forum c/o vanessalistonkcc@gmail.com
Thank you to all those who would like to get involved to protect, conserve and enhance our Celbridge streams.
Sonja Moore