Irish Water chief ‘not surprised’ at boil water notices
Issuing of a second warning was devastating, says Gleeson
THE man, who publicly apologised to over 600,000 water customers in the past week, has admitted that he was neither “shocked or surprised” by the events.
Ireland’s new water supremo Niall Gleeson said it was “devastating” to issue a second boil water notice last Monday — only 10 days after their previous boil notice.
It is hoped final test results on the water from the troubled Leixlip treatment plant, will convince health chiefs in the HSE to allow the boil notices to be lifted by Tuesday evening.
“We are always conscious of public health. Whenever we are suspicious about the quality of water, we issue boil water notices so that people can trust us,” he told the Sunday Independent.
Only three months into his new job, the managing director of Irish Water has been in the public spotlight because of the difficulties at the vital treatment plant in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
A vastly experienced engineer and a native of Dublin, he took up his new job after spending two years as a project director on an energy project for a Hong Kong company.
“When I took up the role, I knew the water infrastructure was in bad shape. I knew there were challenges, so I’m not shocked or surprised,” he said.
Asked if members of the public were accosting him in the street about the East region’s current water problems, he said people do not recognise him, as he was not famous. Although his new role has meant he has been dubbed ‘Aquaman’ by his family.
The pressure is growing to get normal drinking water flowing again, as the ‘boil or buy’ rule continues to affect hundreds of thousands of people.
A failed ‘dosing’ pump for chemicals at Leixlip caused the first boil notice between October 22 and 25. Then excessive ‘cloudiness’ detected in the water, after very heavy rain, caused the second public boil notice on November 4 and it remains in place.
“Last Monday our crisis management team convened. It was a real war room situation,” he said.
“These incidences and notices mean we are monitoring all the time and making it safe all the time,” he said.
“The plant was producing good water from last Wednesday at 5pm but the HSE, in order to be more confident about the resilience of the plant, they wanted us to continue testing and to continue producing samples until Sunday and the results will be available on Tuesday, and if all the samples are clear, then we can lift the boil water notice,” he said.
He admitted: “Having to issue the second boil water notice was very bad news. It was devastating.”
All 18 filters at the plant needed to be replaced, only two at a time can be replaced without impacting on the water supply.
Five filters have been replaced and it is hoped all will have been changed by the middle of next year. In other interviews, he did not rule out further boil notices being issued.
‘Cloudiness’ is always a risk in bad weather when using river water. The Dublin region has an over-reliance on the Liffey, as it gets 85pc of all its drinking water from there. Indeed, 40pc of the entire river is diverted into the water network.
Fingal County Council operate the plant on behalf of Irish Water.
An issue regarding the length of time taken to respond to an alarm being triggered by cloudiness in the water is being dealt with under disciplinary procedures.
There are now more people assigned to work full-time at the Leixlip plant. Irish Water engineers have joined Fingal Council engineers at the plant, Mr Gleeson said.
A major problem for the entire region is that there is not enough spare capacity in the system. Normally, a city would have 25pc spare capacity, which would allow a treatment plant to be shut down for repairs, while other plants boost their production to maintain normal supplies. But Dublin has only 5pc spare capacity, so other plants cannot increase their output by enough to maintain normal service, he said.
Mr Gleeson told this newspaper he wanted to emphasise that the current boil notice was a carefully managed decision after it was discovered the filtration was insufficient.
“The choice we had to make then was to either stop production and people are put on restrictions which means no water at all in certain areas, no water for flushing toilets, no water for washing, or else we deliberately introduce water of a low quality into the system and we tell people there is a boil water notice. That is the decision we made.
“We didn’t let the water go into the system willy-nilly or by mistake, or whatsoever. We deliberately introduced water and coordinated the boil water notice.”
They are now looking at ways of making the Leixlip plant more resilient to bad weather events.
They are costing the introduction of ultra-violet lamps or other systems to reduce the threat of water-borne parasites such as cryptosporidium and giardia.