Free training: Small stream monitoring

Free training in the citizen science stream (index CSSI).

Learn how to monitor your local stream, and help protect our waterways.

Venue: Curraheen Grotto
Date: Saturday, 25 March 2023
Time: 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Buy a Ballinora GAA calendar for 2023

To raise funds to update the playing pitch at Ballinora, we’ve released a calendar for 2023.

The calendar has pictures of all the teams that competed in 2022 for:

- Ballinora GAA
- Ballinora ladies football
- Ballinora camogie

The calendar features all the teams from Under 5s to the different adult teams in each code.

This one-off calendar shows our young people at their best, representing their hard work and teamwork.

Supporting the club and contribute to its future.

The calendar is €10.

To get a calendar, email cthloconnor@gmail.com and we’ll contact you.

Action plan for 2023 published

We’ve published an action plan for 2023.

Our action plans list the work we’ll do under the 8 themes identified in 2012 as most important to our community.

You can also find out what we plan to do where you live.

Tree seed collecting and growing workshop

Venue: Ballinora GAA
Date: Sunday, 27 November 2022
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

Collecting and growing seeds from local trees is a great way to help biodiversity in your community.

Join us with Wild Work for a tree seed workshop.

This will introduce you to:

- the best native trees to collect seed from
- how to correctly prepare and plant seeds
- the best way to care for young trees

In the event of bad weather this event will be held indoors.

TidyTowns 2022: Results are out

We’ve published the 2022 TidyTowns competition results.

We improved our 2021 score by 19 points.

The adjudicators concluded that:

“The committee and volunteers should be proud of their excellent performance in this years competition and it is clear to the adjudicators that significant progress is being made with each passing year in Waterfall and Ballinora.”

You can read the report to find out more.

Safety and security in Ballinora and Waterfall

Venue: Scout den, Ballinora
Date: 1 November 2022
Time: 7:00 pm

We’ve arranged a presentation on safety and security in Ballinora and Waterfall.

Anyone can come along and hear the talk.

The presentation will be given by:

- the Community Garda from Ballincolig
- a Garda officer from Cork City – specialising in advising communities on security and crime prevention

There’ll also be a question and answer session where you can talk about any issues that concern you.

Find out more about security and crime prevention in the Garda information leaflets. These tell you:

- how to protect your smartphone
- about the Garda property app – which helps to easily report things stolen
- how to deal with your personal safety – for example, bogus callers or opportunity theft

Curraheen River WaterBlitz: What we found

We completed the Curraheen River WaterBlitz on Sunday, 9 October 2022.

The weather was not ideal, but it did not dampen our spirits.

The WaterBlitz helps us to get a snapshot of the freshwater quality in the Curraheen River.

The freshwater samples we’ve taken – from a large number of river sites over the weekend – allows us to assess the freshwater quality across a whole river catchment.

The data we’ve collected is uploaded to a central location in DCU, for analysis. It will then be uploaded to a digital map which tells us the location and quality of the rivers tested.

The results of the tests are a general indication (at a Citizen Science level of expertise) of the river quality. The results are not as precise as laboratory tested samples.

The results

We checked the Curraheen River at the Grotto for Nitrates and Phosphates with the following results:

- Nitrates: 5 to 10 mg/L – This is high.
- Phosphates: 0.05 to 0.1 mg/L – This is high.

We’ll now take professional advice on how we can improve the water quality of the Curraheen River.

Nitrates (sample taken at the Grotto Curraheen)

Phosphates (sample taken at the Grotto Curraheen)

Help us test the water quality of Curraheen River

Venue: Grotto Curraheen
Date: 9 October 2022
Time: 11:30 am to 12:00 am

We’ve teamed up with the Local Authorities Waters Programme (LAWP) and Fresh Water Watch to test and monitor the health of the Curraheen River.

This is known as a WaterBlitz.

Help us test the water quality

Join us on the WaterBlitz. The WaterBlitz is a water testing activity, carried out at various sites over one weekend. This allows us to measure nutrients in the local rivers and waterways.

We’ll test for the nutrients, Nitrates and Phosphates – which are the most common pollutants in river waters – at the same time period at various sites. This will give us a snapshot of water health in the region.

Make sure you bring your wellies!