Revealed: 120,000 affected by substandard water

WATER supplies to almost 120,000 people throughout the country were so bad last year that they had a boil water notice or restriction of use placed on them, it has emerged.

And while extreme weather conditions in August last year were partly to blame, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said most were preventable with improved management and operational practice.

Public health notices were issued in relation to 53 water supplies between September 2007 and September 2008 serving around 118,000 people all over the country.

The EPA said while some of the problems were unavoidable, such as the mudslide in Kerry affecting the Dromin treatment plant and the flooding of the plant in Newcastlewest, Co Limerick, most treatment plants should be designed and run to cope with weather variations.

The EPA’s latest report on the provision and quality of drinking water in Ireland for the years 2007-2008 points out that the authority directed 15 local authorities to restore drinking water quality and prosecuted Galway County Council for failing to comply with a legally binding direction.

This is the authority’s second report on drinking water quality after regulations were introduced in 2007 providing a greater level of consumer protection.

It also shows that of the 339 public water supplies identified by the EPA and placed on a remedial action list in early 2008, 83 were removed from the list having completed the necessary remedial actions and 63 were added.

At the end of last month, there were 320 supplies on a remedial action list.

The director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement, Dara Lynott, said that there must be sustained economic investment in infrastructure to deliver clean drinking water even in these tough economic times. “It is a false economy to slash back on drinking water investment,” he warned.

The EPA, which compared the results of almost 240,000 monitoring tests against national and EU standards, found E Coli was detected on at least one occasion in 52 out of 952 public water supplies during 2007, down from 77 in 2006.

E Coli indicates that human or animal waste has entered a water supply and the finding shows that intermittent contamination of about 5% of public water supplies occurred in 2007.

The EPA point out that Ireland’s rate of E coli contamination, at 0.55%, was well above England’s rate of 0.02% and was unacceptable.

And while the number of group water schemes where E Coli was detected dropped from 246 in 2006 to 184 in 2007, over 31% were contaminated at least once in 2007.

Mr Lynott said the problem was not helped by the fact that investment in improving the water plants was not being made as fast as it should and operators were not up to the job.

“The person who is treating the water is a key protector of the public health. But, as plants get upgraded, and you get more complexity in the treatment systems, there needs to be a corresponding upskilling of those charged with the operation and management of water treatment plants.”

While overall compliance with the chemical standards was satisfactory at 99%, challenges still exist to comply with the tighter lead standard in 2013.