40 years ago this year, 3,000 people marched on the Western shore of Lough Neagh, against BP’s plans to mine for lignite, supported by the SDLP and Tories. The campaigners and masses were successful in grinding the fossil fuel company and establishment’s plans to a halt.
40 years later, Lough Neagh is erupting in deadly toxic algae blooms every year since 2023, fuelled by excess nutrients. Stormont’s 2016 Going for Growth policy, which incentivised intensive farming per square metre without consideration for waste is seen as a primary factor.
One of the main polluters, Moy Park, is the north’s first multi-billion pound company. Extraction is also rampant in the form of sand dredging, harming an ecosystem already on its knees, with profits going to an absentee landlord, the Earl of Shaftesbury. Decades of cuts to our water service have left NI water unfit for purpose, dumping millions of tonnes of untreated sewage into our waterways every year, contributing to the algae blooms.
The tap water on the shore, in Mid Ulster, tastes mouldy during the latter part of each year after the blooms, leading many residents who can afford it, to resort to buying bottled water. Alarming health and cancer rates raise serious concerns as to how much water testing is being undertaken and how much the effects of the toxins are really understood. This, alongside pets dying from ingesting the algae make this a public health emergency.
Stormont has failed our Lough, putting private interests, profit and growth above our natural environment and rights to clean drinking water. Polluters receive subsidies and rates relief, which threats of water privatisation become more common.
Additionally, councils like Mid Ulster council are uncritically approving massive factory farms on the shores of Lough Neagh, which further harm the environment, local residents and small farmers. People Before Profit Mid Ulster and Newry / Armagh have received lots of local support for campaigns against these corporate farms, which bear no resemblance to sustainable farming practices.
It’s for these these reasons and more, that the Save Lough Neagh campaign has called for a mass march for Lough Neagh, assembling 12 noon at The Batter Bar on the shores of Lough Neagh, to the Ardboe High Cross. It will be joined by a boat rally and paddle out rally.
Join us on May 17th, let's flood the streets and make it clear that it’s time to put people and planet before profit.
