Mining ground water could be answer to our supply problems
■ The wastage of water through leakage in our mains system is continually cited as a problem. In fact, the water from these defective pipes is not lost – it just adds to the stock of ground water which already holds one third of our rainfall. The other two-thirds drain into the sea through our river system.
Dr David Drew is a professor in Trinity College and was also co-chairman of the Karst Commission of the International Association of Hydrogeologists who delivered a paper in the 1960s anticipating future domestic housing and the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) following the efforts of the newly revitalised Industrial Development Authority (IDA).
His findings pointed the way for a central authority, as he showed that local authorities were not in a position to safeguard one of our most important resources, ground water, as the existence of ground water and the discharge of pollution did not conform to county boundaries.
Consequently, local authorities were unable to police effective control of both agricultural and domestic effluent, delivered into lakes and rivers or ground water by defective sewerage systems, septic tanks and agriculture discharge.
Governments of the past were conscious of the problem and the River Pollution Prevention Acts of 1876 and 1893 made it an offence to discharge sewerage or trade wastes into rivers and canals, and the Public Health Act of 1878 made it an offence for sanitary authorities (mainly local authorities) to discharge sewerage into rivers or the sea until it was pure and non-toxic.
Dr Drew had an interesting concept that, unlike most other resources, water is hired rather than used, as all the water on Earth is part of a circulation system known as the hydrological cycle.
The basic aim of water resource management is to rearrange this natural system of storage and transfers so that water is available where and when required by humans, not forgetting that one-third of all rainfall is under our feet.
Incidentally, the largest spring in Europe is in Cong, Co Mayo, so we must remember that leaking pipes is not our greatest problem.
A fraction of the cost of tearing up streets to repair burst pipes, if spent on ‘mining’ our ground water, would ensure a supply of water nationwide in a series of mini storage tanks all over the country available to be pumped into local water treatment plants when normal supplies are curtailed. Hugh Duffy Cleggan, Co Galway