Water quality fails to make the grade

TIME is running out for the Government to ensure that drinking water quality is up to EU standards.

There’s continuing concern about group schemes, with the EPA describing the quality of water in private group schemes as the “most challenging” issue facing those charged with responsibility for drinking water in Ireland.

Rivers and lakes are the source of 75% of our drinking water and, as has been well documented, such sources have become seriously polluted.

Also, many private group schemes — more than two-thirds in Roscommon alone — have become contaminated by waste from farmyards or septic tanks. Up to 150,000 households depend on private schemes for water.

Brussels is cracking the whip and the EU Water Quality Directive is binding in Irish law. Failure to comply with this can result in severe penalties on the Government, which has set aside around €600m in the National Development Plan to improve the water situation.

Local authority engineers and rural water liaison officers have been told that time is running out for Ireland to meet its obligations. At a recent seminar in Athlone, the National Federation of Group Schemes was told that the European Court of Justice is likely to impose penalties sooner rather than later.

The seminar was organised in response to a letter received by Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Aherne that the European Commission is unhappy with progress since the judgement of the European Court of Justice in 2002, which found that Ireland is in breach of water quality standards in group schemes.

The letter indicated that the Commission is preparing to refer the case back to the European Court so that penalties can be imposed.

According to the latest issue of Rural Water News, there’s an urgency “about finding solutions to poor water quality and having a proper monitoring regime countrywide.”

However, a recent study has shown that the scale of the remedial task is “significantly greater” than was thought some years ago.

A national monitoring programme has identified 229 privately-sourced group schemes, which are not included in the European Court of Justice case. Of these, 107 do not comply with water quality standards.

Only 45% of private group schemes are compliant, with 318 failing.

In its report on the quality of drinking water for 2004, the EPA said water provided to 84% of the population by the public authorities was satisfactory, while the quality of water provided to less than 7% of the population by private group schemes was unsatisfactory.

The EPA said the primary reason for the unsatisfactory status of the private schemes was the relatively low percentage of samples complying with the E. coli regulations.

“The poor microbiological quality of the private group water schemes is the most challenging issue facing the authorities charged with responsibility for drinking water in Ireland,” the EPA said.

The EPA also found that the number of samples and individual tests should have been greater, but many sanitary authorities did not fulfil the minimum monitoring requirements.

No monitoring was carried out on 26% of public group supplies and on 10% of private group schemes.