Northern Ireland Water has agreed to lease a small portion of Woodburn Forest near Carrickfergus for the drilling of an exploratory oil well.
The work is being undertaken by an independent company, Infrastrata, under a licence awarded by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (DETI). All the work is subject to the approval and agreement of the planning authorities, DETI and Forest Service - Infrastrata cannot drill a permanent well without obtaining planning permission.
A statement issued by the water company said it is aware of the public concern regarding the proposed oil exploration work at Woodburn Forest and has included a clause in the Agreement with Infrastrata that prohibits using the technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), both now and in the future.
NI Water said it is satisfied that the proposed work will have no detrimental impact upon the impounding reservoir or the public water supply.
The well site has been designed to ensure that all potential discharges from the site are contained and no discharges, either controlled or uncontrolled, will occur from the site into the catchment.
The site has also been designed as ‘zero discharge’ which means there will be no discharge from the site to local watercourses and therefore no adverse impact on the catchment. This is done by using a geosynthetic clay layer to prevent any liquids on site from soaking into the ground below.
Bunds will prevent any flow off the site and ditches are used to contain rainwater, with any surplus water then tankered away.
The reservoirs within the Dorisland catchment are all surface fed with no ground water source feeding into them.
If a spill into the catchment was to occur and enter surface watercourses to any of the Woodburn Reservoirs then NI Water has the ability to isolate the reservoir and cease abstraction from the reservoir. Water supply would be maintained through abstraction from the other impounding reservoirs within the Dorisland Catchment area.
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