Study on impact of Louth water outage
THE Centre for Freshwater and Environmental Studies at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) is undertaking a project to investigate the impact that the major water services outage in Drogheda last summer had on the communities and businesses in the affected area.
The Staleen Water Treatment Plant ( WTP) provides drinking water to approximately 90,000 people located in the town of Drogheda and areas of southern County Louth and eastern County Meath.
Disaster struck on the afternoon of Thursday 20th July 2017 when a rising main water pipe burst causing a water services outage.
Irish Water undertook a series of repairs resulting in operations returning to normal on the evening of Wednesday 26th July, with normal water supply to communities restored over the following days.
The new project to determine the impact on the local community is funded by the National Water Forum and the Public Water Forum, and will identify:
The timeline of events leading up to the restoration of water services;
The perception of management responses to the situation and the key engagement activities which were perceived to be either successful or unsuccessful.
The project will be undertaking a series of initiatives to gather opinion on the water services outage and how information was communicated during the outage period.
These initiatives will include online surveys, door-to-door surveys, interviews and a number of focus group meetings. Members of the project team will be actively engaging communities in areas affected by the water outage during the period 15th-30th November 2017.
Founded in 2005, the Centre for Freshwater and Environmental Studies (CFES) is an active and vibrant research centre within the School of Health and Science in Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT).
For more information or to be involved in the project, please contact the project lead, Dr Alec Rolston: alec.rolston@ dkit.ie