Customers told to conserve water as shortages threatened over Christmas if prolonged frost hits
FORGET about a white Christmas, Dublin could be heading for a dry one.
Residents of the capital are facing more water shortage misery in the coming weeks as a result of reduced capacity at the water treatment plant in Leixlip, Irish Water has warned.
It comes after 600,000 people were last month left with a boil water notice, on two separate occasions, resulting from problems with water quality at the plant.
While the semi-State body works to address the issues at the plant, its capacity has been reduced, causing serious problems for the network.
Tom Cuddy, of Irish Water’s asset operations, said the network was now “on the line” and a prolonged frost could mean shortages.
Met Éireann said this weekend will be particularly “raw” with low temperatures of –2C after dark, with “wintry falls”, and said it would be “very frosty at times with some icy stretches”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s ‘Morning
Ireland’, Mr Cuddy appealed to people and businesses in the capital to conserve water coming up to the festive period.
“Essentially in the Greater Dublin area, the supply-and-demand balance for drinking water is on the line.
“Our production capacity has reduced somewhat and there’s an inexorable increase in demand from households and from businesses as we come through the winter,” he said.
“This is a narrowing gap – the headroom between what we can produce and what’s demanded – and that has narrowed even further this year.
“In particular, our production capacity has been reduced because we have constrictions at some of our treatment plants, in particular Leixlip.”
He said the semi-State body was keen to raise people’s awareness about the issue.
“It’s very important that people are aware that they conserve water where they can, that they check their plumbing and that they report leaks,” he said.
The works at the Leixlip plant are not scheduled to be completed until next year.
Mr Cuddy said it was a rolling issue, “an enduring situation” that will go on for a number of months.
He said the other plants were at their maximum capacity to make up for the shortfall, while Irish Water was also repairing 1,500 leaks a month.
“There are the obvious winter challenges of cold weather. There’s also an increase in demand in customer use, particularly in businesses,” he said. He added the situation was “right on the line” but “stable” at the moment with no headroom in the event of sharp and prolonged frost.
According to Irish Water, the current increase in demand is higher than any previous year and is 10 million litres a day, which, it said, was enough water to fill Liberty Hall, and higher than this time last year.
It has appealed to people to conserve water through measures like turning off the tap while brushing teeth and shaving, which can save up to six litres of water per minute.
Irish Water has been upgrading the Vartry Water Supply Scheme by building a new treatment plant.
It has also upgraded the treated water reservoir at Stillorgan, representing an investment of approximately €200m.
“These upgrades are due to be completed in 2020,” it said, adding that at Leixlip Water Treatment Plant the old section of the plant is being upgraded on a phased basis.
The last boil water notice affected people in Dublin, Kildare and Meath for eight days.
It resulted from heavy rainfall washing amounts of organic matter into reservoirs.
This increased the turbidity (cloudiness) of the source water above acceptable levels.