Date: 21 February 2008
Local Bangor resident Rachael Ireland has been selected as the Junior category winner of Glen Water’s Northern Ireland wide ‘Environmental Photographer of the Year’ competition.
Winning two top-of-the-range mountain bikes, complete with safety helmets, Rachael's entry demonstrated real artistic flair and a thorough understanding of the competitions central 'green' theme.
Organised in response to World Environment Day, the environmental photographic competition was based around global warming or 'Melting Ice - a hot topic'.
All entries had to either depict man-made activities that contribute towards climate change or illustrate what the effects of global warming mean to the individual photographer.
With three separate categories including, junior (for 10-15 year olds), intermediate (for 15-21 year olds), and senior (for 21 year olds and over) the competition attracted a lot of interest.
"We were very impressed by the standard and quality of the entries," said Jim Conlon, General Manager, Glen Water. "It proves that there is a genuine awareness and concern about environmental issues within Northern Ireland."
"The purpose of our competition was to encourage more people to think about global warming and other environmental problems. At Glen Water we are delivering Project Omega, which upon completion will ensure sewage discharges from the North Down/Ards area to the Irish Sea are compliant with current and future EU Directives," he continued.
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| Brian Hennessy, from Antrim was named as winner of the senior category. | Michael Barkley, from Carrickfergus was named winner of the intermediary category. |
Glen Water was selected by Northern Ireland Water in 2005 to deliver Project Omega. A £122 million Private Public Partnership (PPP) programme the scheme will create healthier, cleaner beaches along the North Down/Ards coastline and allow Northern Ireland to meet strict new EU Directives on water quality.
As part of the Project a number of existing Wastewater Treatment Works in the Craigavon, Armagh and Richhill area are also being upgraded in addition to a new pipeline between Seagoe and Ballynacor WWTW's.
An ecologically-focussed forward thinking company, Glen Water deploys a number of environmentally sustainable construction techniques on all of its building sites.
"We place a great deal of emphasis on eco-friendly building practices on all of our projects. These range from the re-use of all excavated materials, to comprehensive waste disposal techniques and site-to-site car sharing to reduce carbon emissions," said Peter Dew, Project Leader, Laing O'Rourke.