Love Your Beach Campaign - Portballintrae

Calling All Northern Ireland Waveriders
URGENT! Action needed by August the 31st.

One of Northern Ireland’s best surfing beaches, Portballintrae’s Runkerry Strand, is being considered by the Government as a possible new EU bathing water.

Getting a beach classified as an ‘EU bathing water’ brings with it environmental improvements that make the beach cleaner and safer for everyone to use.

From June to September, beaches designated as bathing waters benefit from weekly water quality testing, improved litter management and better facilities that help the public enjoy their time spent at the beach.

Improvements to the local sewerage infrastructure are already underway in the area, but if we can persuade the Government that enough people use the beach for bathing and recreation and get it designated, we can put an end to the poor water quality the beach often experiences due to inadequate sewage treatment and poor land management practices.

This is the best opportunity we will have for some time so we must seize it. Bathing water designation will protect your health as a waverider and Portballintrae’s waves from pollution in the future.

The Government are currently surveying the beach to see how well used it is. Whilst we don’t know when the beach user surveys will take place it’s important that people use the beach on a regular basis.

Because of a failure by the European Union’s legal wordsmiths, the Directive does not specifically include ‘recreational water users’ within the term ‘bathing’ despite this group being scientifically more vulnerable to falling ill from poor water quality than traditional bathers. Ridiculous we know, but with that in mind we have to ensure that waveriders are also counted as bathers if we are to be in with a shout of getting the designation of Portballintrae’s Runkerry Strand.

To help us in our lobbying of the Government of Northern Ireland, we’d like you to sign our online petition if you use the water at Portballintrae between June and September. We’ll present these signatures at the end of the bathing season before the Government decides on the future of Portballintrae.

Petition

To: William Caldwell, DOE Planning and Environmental Policy Group, 3rd Floor, Calvert House, 23 Castle Place, Belfast, BT1 1FYI Support the designation of Portballintrae’s Runkerry Strand as an EU bathing water. I use the beach both as a bather and as a Choose if appropriate surfer windsurfer kayaker canoeist diver sailor regularly during the June to September bathing season and would like to see this beach benefit from bathing water status to help better protect public health and the local environment. I estimate I use Runkerry Strand times a week during the June to September period.
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