In November to December 2009 the river flooded, inflicting the worst damage on the City of Cork for over 800 years. The Lee Water Station was forced to shut down after being submerged under 20ft of water, and resulted in 40% of Cork Ciry (50,000 people) being without running water. [3]
UCC was also flooded badly, resulting in lectures being canceled throughout the week.[4] There was severe damage to their newly built IT building (The Western Gateway Building) situated next to the river. The Western Gateway Building's basement was completely flooded, damaging the plant room and servers, and a 300 seat auditorium was flooded to near ceiling height.[5]
To prevent further flooding, the ESB made a controversial decision to release water from the Inniscarra hydro-electric dam. This released 535 tonnes of water per second into the already flooded river, raising the flood to 2ft in the City's centre. ESB insisted this was an essential move, and if water had not been released, the flooding would have been much worse.
déanta ag Seán o Tonnaigh
deadly!
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