2009 Flooding
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 six metres of water, and resulted in 40% of Cork City (50,000 people) being without running water for over one week.
University College Cork was also flooded badly, resulting in lectures being canceled throughout the week. There was severe damage to their newly built IT building, the Western Gateway Building, situated next to the river. The building's basement was completely flooded, damaging the plant room and servers, and a 300 seat auditorium was flooded to near ceiling height.
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 1.5 metres in parts of the city centre. The ESB insisted this was an essential move, and if water had not been released, the flooding would have been much worse.
Read more about this topic: River Lee