Fri­day 19th Jan­u­ary 2007.
Today a good crowd of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the usu­al ren­dezvous, approx 60+ peo­ple. The crowd was buoyed by the pres­ence of a mem­ber of Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ty Mon­i­tor, over from the states, and a film crew trav­el­ling with him. At 7.30 peo­ple pro­ceed­ed up the road, some wear­ing white jump suits with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants inscribed on the front, poi­sons which the Bal­linaboy ter­mi­nal would pol­lute the local area, fresh water and sea with. The crowd was lead with a large ban­ner read­ing Cor­rib Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness.

As the crowd passed over the nar­row bridge tem­pers frayed and to nobod­ies sur­prise the Gar­dai ploughed into the pro­tes­tors, shov­ing them every which way. At this point two Gar­dai held Pat’s arms while anoth­er punched him in the face sev­er­al times. Sim­i­lar­ly his broth­er Mar­tin was seri­ous­ly assault­ed, suf­fer­ing cut­ting and bruis­ing to face and eye. But as the dawn has not yet bro­ken cap­tur­ing any image of this is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly giv­en the num­ber of Gar­dai there to hide each oth­ers activ­i­ties and deny same.
It’s very hard to ascer­tain if there is any log­i­cal point to the Gar­dai activ­i­ties with regard to wad­ing in and assault­ing all around them as oth­er than to bul­ly and injure peo­ple it serves no prac­ti­cal pur­pose. Usu­al­ly their excuse for push­ing and shov­ing is to ensure your safe­ty and make sure you are on the oth­er side of the white line so none of Shells work­ers or trucks can pos­si­bly be delayed for even a sec­ond. How­ev­er as can be seen in the first pho­to some Gar­dai are near­ly on the oth­er side of the road, where there is no hard shoul­der as this is on the bridge, and still they are push­ing, shov­ing and assault­ing peo­ple.

Yes­ter­day after the Gar­dai head­ed off for their break­fasts, leav­ing the trucks to fend for them­selves, local res­i­dents blocked access to the site, hold­ing up stone trucks for a peri­od of time. Secu­ri­ty appeared to pan­ic some­what clos­ing and lock­ing the site gates before Gar­dai with out a com­mand­ing offi­cer appeared on the scene to ush­er in the stalled trucks.

Water qual­i­ty con­tin­ues to be a seri­ous issue, despite Co.Co. assur­ances that it is fine. Images below show water leav­ing the Bal­linaboy site, some clear­ly untreat­ed and look­ing very sim­i­lar to last year, sil­ver grey, when it was found to be heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with alu­mini­um. The main out­fall area from the site looks mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter, where the water is at least sup­posed to have been treat­ed by this point, how­ev­er it is also clear­ly looks noth­ing like drink­ing water qual­i­ty and exhibits some sil­ver grey colour­ing. Despite the fact that all water leav­ing the site is sup­posed to be treat­ed before leav­ing site you can clear­ly see the water from the truck wash at Gate 3 being pumped straight into exit­ing drains.
The past 3 days have seen mem­bers of Shell to Sea hand­ing out leaflets at the Shell green­wash events in Castle­bar and Bal­li­na. Very few peo­ple attend­ed these events, and num­bers must have been dou­bled or even tre­bled by the atten­dance of 2 school groups, 1 from sec­ondary school and 1 from pri­ma­ry school, nev­er to ear­ly to start brain wash­ing.

Our own pres­ence was wel­comed by many peo­ple pass­ing by and many who did go in to see Shells expen­sive PR work were firm­ly behind the stance of Shell to Sea. As we hand­ed out infor­ma­tion leaflets and chat­ted to peo­ple 1 passer­by even went into the hotel and brought out a tray of steam­ing hot whiskeys!