Cork developments

Lackadaisical

I don't quite get the concept of some of them. E.g. along the existing boardwalk at the top of the Grand Parade, there appears to be a wall upstream towards the bridge, and none downstream.

Won't the water flow around the bridges where they penetrate the walls?

Also there are buildings there which literally hang over the side of the water?

Is there not a risk that water will just come up through basements / find its way through various underground infrastructure e.g. ducts, culverts and so on? Sealing absolutely everything would be a gargantuan task, given it's a centuries old quayside with unknown structures buried under it / in it.

It just doesn't make sense to me, given the city is basically sitting in a reclaimed marsh.

Also, if you seal it all up and dry it out, is there not a risk of changes in the ground/soil ? I'd assume it's much like as sponge and the % water content is part of the structure. Would that not risk soil compacting / foundations having issues?

I know that I've heard of issues with underground metal infrastructure in the city centre because there's brine in the soil which corrodes iron pipes, which to me would indicate there's a lot of hydrological activity that's going largely unseen.

I know if it were me, I would be approaching this from the least impact point of view and trying to maintain a status quo situation in the oldest parts of the urban area, on the basis that what's under it is not only unknown but unknowable.

Justin Credible Darts

what annoyed me is the actors in the pic...some people appearing in different pics which are miles apart.

Whole thing makes little sense as a whole

hans aus dtschl

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

https://www.lowerleefrs.ie/gallery/

Those are the pics I was thinking of also.
Looking at them, the whole thing seems hare-brained: as if they designed something to have maximum visual impact and minimum effectiveness.

When you compare it to the idea of a downstream barrage or tidal barrier, the tidal barrier seems like a no-brainer. It could even provide a downstream foot crossing. I think the "costed" (disputed) alternate proposal was from Passage to Little Island. It doesn't take a lot of local knowledge to know that such a crossing would be valuable.

TheChizler

Lackadaisical wrote: »

Is there not a risk that water will just come up through basements / find its way through various underground infrastructure e.g. ducts, culverts and so on? Sealing absolutely everything would be a gargantuan task, given it's a centuries old quayside with unknown structures buried under it / in it.

It just doesn't make sense to me, given the city is basically sitting in a reclaimed marsh.

EXACTLY the point being made by the architechts, civil, and environmental engineers that I've spoke to who are against it.

AugustusMinimus

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

https://www.lowerleefrs.ie/gallery/

Those are the pics I was thinking of also.
Looking at them, the whole thing seems hare-brained: as if they designed something to have maximum visual impact and minimum effectiveness.

When you compare it to the idea of a downstream barrage or tidal barrier, the tidal barrier seems like a no-brainer. It could even provide a downstream foot crossing. I think the "costed" (disputed) alternate proposal was from Passage to Little Island. It doesn't take a lot of local knowledge to know that such a crossing would be valuable.

One from Passage to Rushbrooke would be good and would double as a bridge.

snotboogie

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

https://www.lowerleefrs.ie/gallery/

I can't comment on the effectiveness but I'd hardly call their appearance deranged. I would say they are an improvement on a lot of the rotting quayside that we have now.

mrpdap

snotboogie wrote: »

I can't comment on the effectiveness but I'd hardly call their appearance deranged. I would say they are an improvement on a lot of the rotting quayside that we have now.

There are a number of issues
1) Appearance - surely its better to restore rather than to replace with concrete. CCC have just completed a wonderful restoration of Patrick's Bridge.
2) Effectiveness - whatever's put in place must be effective. As Lackadaisical and others have pointed out the proposed solution may not even work
3) Cost - the proposed OPW/CCC scheme will take 10 years to complete., What's the likelihood of such a project coming in on time. What's the cost of the disruption to the city.
4) My way or the highway. OPW/CCC are refusing to listen to the opinions of others, even experts with far more experience of dealing with flooding then OPW/CCC
5) look at the utter mess that the OPW have made in Bandon and Skibbereen

hans aus dtschl

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

One from Passage to Rushbrooke would be good and would double as a bridge.

Not as straightforward because of rerouting of tidal water through East Ferry, then Belvelly and Slatty Water and the effects this would have on the water flows and ecosystems in both.

The report was quite interesting on this: you'd either need two barriers at East Ferry and Rushbrooke or use Passage/Little Island and increase the height of the land (including the train) at the north of Little Island / Rockgrove. It would only need a few metres of an embankment at Little Island I think, from memory. But this would be pretty straightforward work.

There was a full analysis of the flows in the channel and everything, the report was quite good. However it never explained why the increased quay wall heights were chosen at the end though. As I read the report, it looked like the tidal barrier was a viable solution, just "too expensive". If the report was designed to disprove the viability of a tidal barrier, I felt it did the opposite!

Edit - report is here:

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/arup-s3-lower-lee-frs-ie-wp-static/wp-content/uploads/lee_valley/LLFRS_SupplementaryReportonOptionofTidalBarrier.pdf

fonzy951

snotboogie wrote: »

I can't comment on the effectiveness but I'd hardly call their appearance deranged. I would say they are an improvement on a lot of the rotting quayside that we have now.

Totally agree, majority of the quaysides are in an awful state and a real embarrassment at present, what is being proposed is a big improvement.

lostinsuperfunk

I think there are retractable barriers on the Grand Parade boardwalk section. The benches that the people are sitting on form part of the barrier, the sections in between are normally lowered but can be raised. This is one of the better parts of the design. Some other parts (e.g. City Hall quay and Lee Fields) are pretty unsightly in my opinion.

I think the tidal barrier option is 3-4 x more expensive and also has its own environmental impacts. However, could a Little Island-Passage barrage support a rail link to the new Port of Cork in Ringaskiddy? It could take a lot of trucks and cars off the road. Maybe the M28 could be shelved? :rolleyes:
Someone needs to look at the bigger picture here.

snotboogie

snotboogie wrote: »

I can't comment on the effectiveness but I'd hardly call their appearance deranged. I would say they are an improvement on a lot of the rotting quayside that we have now.

They look line, the real life Dublin examples are also grand.


Still can not see how they can work in a city full of underground channels

hans aus dtschl

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

I think there are retractable barriers on the Grand Parade boardwalk section. The benches that the people are sitting on form part of the barrier, the sections in between are normally lowered but can be raised. This is one of the better parts of the design. Some other parts (e.g. City Hall quay and Lee Fields) are pretty unsightly in my opinion.

I think the tidal barrier option is 3-4 x more expensive and also has its own environmental impacts. However, could a Little Island-Passage barrage support a rail link to the new Port of Cork in Ringaskiddy? It could take a lot of trucks and cars off the road. Maybe the M28 could be shelved? :rolleyes:
Someone needs to look at the bigger picture here.

I'm not sure if a tidal barrier could connect with rail: it would depend on the specific design used.

For bigger picture though, a vast number of properties would be protected with a tidal barrier plan, compared with a city centre wall plan which would only protect approx 2,000 properties in the centre island.

I should add that I've no skin in the game, as the places I live and work aren't in flood zones. But it just seems like the quay walls are a penny-pinching and short-term solution. The Dutch do it the right way IMO.

who_me

My concern would be - is the water level does rise above the current banks, and there are no gaps in the new walls, and they hold, and they're not over-topped; can you still be certain it's not going to come up through any drain/pipe in the city?

It really does seem like a costly, ugly, yet short-term (and possibly ineffective) solution.

AugustusMinimus

Am I correct in saying that the preferred OPW solution for Dublin is a tidal barrier?

Markcheese

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

I think there are retractable barriers on the Grand Parade boardwalk section. The benches that the people are sitting on form part of the barrier, the sections in between are normally lowered but can be raised. This is one of the better parts of the design. Some other parts (e.g. City Hall quay and Lee Fields) are pretty unsightly in my opinion.

I think the tidal barrier option is 3-4 x more expensive and also has its own environmental impacts. However, could a Little Island-Passage barrage support a rail link to the new Port of Cork in Ringaskiddy? It could take a lot of trucks and cars off the road. Maybe the M28 could be shelved? :rolleyes:
Someone needs to look at the bigger picture here.

I wouldn't worry too much about a rail link to ringaskiddy,
There was a rail link to tivoli, and then to the rail freight yard by tivoli. It was disconnected years ago, and road freight has only got better with the motorway system, but its not the Irish rail way,

Apogee

snotboogie wrote: »

Glenveagh applying for 274 apts on the Ursuline Convent site:

http://ursulinegardensshd.ie/

Approved by ABP with conditions
https://twitter.com/cllrkmac/status/1153269649703915520

namloc1980

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

However, could a Little Island-Passage barrage support a rail link to the new Port of Cork in Ringaskiddy? It could take a lot of trucks and cars off the road. Maybe the M28 could be shelved? :rolleyes:
Someone needs to look at the bigger picture here.

The rail link at Tivoli docks was rarely used and eventually abandoned in the late 80s/90s. Road freight is much more flexible than rail freight especially in a small country like Ireland. If there was no demand in Tivoli with an adjacent rail line, there would definitely be no demand for an extremely costly rail link to Ringaskiddy.

Lackadaisical

On the tidal barrier issue, I wonder with some imagination could it be incorporated into a tidal hydropower project ?

That might actually help fund it as it would both be commercially generating revenues and it would be attracting green energy investment and state / EU funds.

It just seems like a huge opportunity to build a serious tidal energy project and it has all the electrical grid infrastructure at its disposal.

1. You’d potentially solve Cork’s tidal flooding issue without messing up the city center or disrupting traders.

2. You’d potentially reduce the cost on the state.

3. You’d have a big new source or renewable energy

4. You’d reduce our carbon emissions and thus reduce fines / costs of carbon credit purchases - going someway toward contributing to achieving our Paris Agreement commitments, which we are not taking seriously enough.

hans aus dtschl

Lackadaisical wrote: »

On the tidal barrier issue, I wonder with some imagination could it be incorporated into a tidal hydropower project ?

That might actually help fund it as it would both be commercially generating revenues and it would be attracting green energy investment and state / EU funds.

It just seems like a huge opportunity to build a serious tidal energy project and it has all the electrical grid infrastructure at its disposal.

1. You’d potentially solve Cork’s tidal flooding issue without messing up the city center or disrupting traders.

2. You’d potentially reduce the cost on the state.

3. You’d have a big new source or renewable energy

4. You’d reduce our carbon emissions and thus reduce fines / costs of carbon credit purchases - going someway toward contributing to achieving our Paris Agreement commitments, which we are not taking seriously enough.

You'd be talking about a lock system. I believe that "volume of traffic" is an issue there, plus the fact that everything up to the Lee Road is tidal/saltwater and you'd possibly be changing it all to freshwater. So there are some issues.

At the same time, flooding the Gearagh with freshwarer was apparently no problem at all, so I think your idea is at least worth investigating.

TheChizler

Also tidal doesn't work...
Source: my friend who is a tidal engineer

hans aus dtschl

Markcheese wrote: »

I wouldn't worry too much about a rail link to ringaskiddy,
There was a rail link to tivoli, and then to the rail freight yard by tivoli. It was disconnected years ago, and road freight has only got better with the motorway system, but its not the Irish rail way,

All the discussion of a crossing is a little bit beside the point anyway. The tidal barrier as designed would be "normally open".

hans aus dtschl

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

Am I correct in saying that the preferred OPW solution for Dublin is a tidal barrier?

I don't know about Dublin.

NY is proposing urbanised levees for Manhattan. Which could work, incorporated with the tidal wall (that's what the OPW is getting at, with the street furniture etc). But you must non-return valve every drain in the city centre and give up on the rest of the city. And this makes sense in somewhere like Manhattan, but for Cork the centre island isn't the only concern, it's also places like Douglas, Glanmire, Glounthaune, Midleton: the harbour is dotted with risk areas.

The OPW proposes to wall ALL of these areas.

When I look at that scale of work (and objections) I think the Dutch model of a barrier coupled with pumps might be the only long-term solution.

nyck04

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I don't know about Dublin.
When I look at that scale of work (and objections) I think the Dutch model of a barrier coupled with pumps might be the only long-term solution.

Surely OPW have reached out to the Dutch for help with our flooding problem.

Dutch?

So BAM it is then

hans aus dtschl

In fairness the official documents seem to have good technical references. Including plenty Dutch references.

By "Dutch model" I meant that philosophically the Dutch don't have a problem with paying the high cost (including ecological cost) of large scale sea defences.

The Little Island tidal barrier as OPW have (re)designed it has been turned down not because of technical issues but rather because of cost and ecological impact.

Markcheese

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I don't know about Dublin.

NY is proposing urbanised levees for Manhattan. Which could work, incorporated with the tidal wall (that's what the OPW is getting at, with the street furniture etc). But you must non-return valve every drain in the city centre and give up on the rest of the city. And this makes sense in somewhere like Manhattan, but for Cork the centre island isn't the only concern, it's also places like Douglas, Glanmire, Glounthaune, Midleton: the harbour is dotted with risk areas.

The OPW proposes to wall ALL of these areas.

When I look at that scale of work (and objections) I think the Dutch model of a barrier coupled with pumps might be the only long-term solution.

Cork harbour has a very narrow, relativly shallow neck, basically from Fort Camden near crosshaven across to the cliffs between whitegate and roaches point,
That'd be a massive tidal barrier, with huge cost and huge environmental impacts,
But there are other types of barriers, that swing into place when there are tidal or storm surges, still not cheap, and no other potential benefits.. Like tidal energy or harbour bridge,

https://images.app.goo.gl/4jQ9DQr2w8ZHpSKL6

hans aus dtschl

Markcheese wrote: »

Cork harbour has a very narrow, relativly shallow neck, basically from Fort Camden near crosshaven across to the cliffs between whitegate and roaches point,
That'd be a massive tidal barrier, with huge cost and huge environmental impacts,
But there are other types of barriers, that swing into place when there are tidal or storm surges, still not cheap, and no other potential benefits.. Like tidal energy or harbour bridge,

https://images.app.goo.gl/4jQ9DQr2w8ZHpSKL6

Yes that's exactly right.
A massive job with a massive cost. But I think the strategy of trying to wall almost the entire harbour piecemeal won't actually be possible.

How much power could be generated with a tidal generator, at Roches Point?

What's the drawback of tidal? 2 way flow of water?

hans aus dtschl

Deleted User wrote: »

How much power could be generated with a tidal generator, at Roches Point?

What's the drawback of tidal? 2 way flow of water?

I don't think they're a fully proven technology.

hans aus dtschl

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I don't think they're a fully proven technology.

Agreed but I think that is more for free standing/floating units.

This would basically be a massive hydro electric dam no?
Issues I see of the bat are 2 way water flow and salt water.

Not sure of anything else though


such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station