Councils should look closer to home for water leaks

IN response to Kathy Sinnott’s letter on water charges (August 31), I’d like to give an example at the business I work for.

There are two of us in the office. We use water for tea, washing up and flushing the toilet – about 42 litres a day on average. That would work out at €20 of water plus €260 for the “supply charge”.

The local authority had a meter installed about two years ago, but only started charging last year. We got three bills from the local authority late last year.

The first was for January-March, the second for April-June and the third for July-September. These all came in the same month.

The readings were crazy. Rather than using about 42 litres a day, it said we were using more than 1,000 litres per day.

The fact that the bills came together meant we had no opportunity to address the problem until we’d already been billed for nine months of water – almost €1,000.

We stood our ground and argued with the council about the bill. They sent an engineer to tell us, in a five-minute inspection, that the pipes inside our walls were leaking. I knew this couldn’t be the case because of the amount of water involved.

Eventually, we had them dug up and found a leak in the pipes outside the building (The building actually belongs to the local council, being a refurbished bungalow).

After much, much more argument and legal threats from the council, we eventually told them we’d pay for the water we’d used, but not for the water that hadn’t made it into the building because of a pipe that was leaking probably since they built the place.

Obviously they don’t check for leaks when installing meters, even on properties the council itself owns.

I would ask your readers to consider the following.

1. How much water is lost by local councils as a result of leaks in their own systems? In Limerick it was reported at one time to be losing 1.3 million gallons per day.

2. If the council starts metering private homes, and including people who rent houses from it, will it do any inspections first to check that the systems are not leaking or simply charge people regardless of whether it is hooking a meter into a faulty system to start with.

3. How many people are likely to put up with the hassle it takes to argue against an incorrect water bill? It took us months to resolve.

4. A fixed charge for every litre of water means they charge for every litre, not just any we might waste by leaving taps running, or using a hose on the car instead of bucket and sponge, but every litre we use whether for drinking, cooking or flushing the toilet.

5. The standard house in Ireland uses drinking quality water for the washing machine and the toilet. This is hardly a consumer choice.

Grey water/rain systems should be encouraged rather than simply taxing people for using the plumbing that came with the house.

We need to be more careful and creative in our uses of water, but taxing families for using water to cook, wash their kids and keep the toilets running is unfair.

Tim Hourigan

Cedar Court

Kennedy Park

Limerick