Sandra Chapman: ​Is my favourite lough facing disaster and if so how can it be mended?

I’m talking about my beloved Lough Neagh which this newspaper declared this week, in an article by Johnny McNabb, was ‘facing disaster’.

Lough Neagh has been in difficulties for years. The Ballyronan side of it was where my father’s family came from; it was the place where I spent a lot of my childhood. I could never have imagined then that it would be in the pickle it is now.

Modern living has been slowly destroying this wonderful fresh water lough. But matters got worse when imported shellfish from the sea were processed at Lough Neagh some years back.

What is known as the zebra muscle, an imported creature, took up residence some years ago. I believe it is there to stay as no-one has found a method of getting rid of it.

Over the decades algae made a regular appearance, as did pollution of all kinds, one of the worst being sewage. A warmer climate is expected to add to the lough’s problems. The locals are frustrated because they say the lake is facing ‘an environmental disaster.’ Vast algae blooms are wreaking havoc.

My childhood memories of the lough are many and wonderful. We lived a short bike ride away and had barbecues on the sandy shore. But it now needs serious help. It’s one of the biggest lakes we have and certainly within the British Isles. It has provided good income for fishermen and businesses over the decades and has been a huge draw for tourists and sailors. But now the only talk around the area is how the lough can be saved from total destruction. Rivers that run into the lough are also facing pollution.

But nature is surely fed up. It is believed that as the climate continues to warm up this will not be helpful to the lough. Is it trying to tell us something?

This afternoon concerned members of the Lough Neagh collective group are meeting to highlight the problems of the lough and the public are invited. They describe it as an ‘environmental disaster’ and they call their event today ‘a wake’. That’s a fair description. But a great deal of effort will have to be made by industries using the facilities of the lough. The zebra muscle may be the devil incarnate to some but I’ve often seen the rubbish left behind by the public. It has only one place to go when it rains – straight into the water.

Yet this whole area could be one of our greatest tourist attractions, albeit not during the ‘black fly season,’ but that is temporary.

Jo Montague of the Lough Neagh collective group believes it’s important that someone comes forward with a solution to ‘try and save the lough’.

This is a lough which decades ago provided the sand for the building of homes in war-torn Belfast and other parts of the province. It survived other industrial raids and its fish kept the hunger at bay for many families. It needs love and care to avoid another zebra muscle type disaster.