New reservoirs should bring an end to water woes at Wexford villages

THE sight of huge cranes and the hum of heavy machinery has been evident at Kilmallock, Ballymurn in recent days as work progressed on the installation of two new water reservoir tanks.

The two large tanks will store in excess of 24 hours worth of water to serve the like of Castlebridge, Crossabeg and Oylegate in the event of an outage or supply issues.

It’s something that passing locals will be delighted to see as the local area has been plagued with water issues for some time now. While the rest of the county welcomed warm and sunny weather, any prolonged period of sunshine for residents of Airfield Road in Castlebridge in particular meant days without showers, washing machines and tap water.

Having engaged with locals on the issue for some time, nobody was happier to see the construction of the new reservoirs than Labour councillor George Lawlor.

“This will be the end of a long, frustrating and upsetting saga for people in Castlebridge, in particular those around Airfield Road,” he said.

“They’ve suffered hugely due to this water issue for years. If we saw three days of sunshine, you were nearly guaranteed there’d be no water on Airfield Road. I spoke to people who had even considered moving house due to the frequency of the water problem.”

Having engaged the assistance of engineers Fionnuala Callery and Ken Jones from Wexford County Council, a new water main was installed last year, improving service and now it’s hoped that the two new reservoirs at Kilmallock will provide the required back-up to ensure that the area’s water woes are a thing of the past.

“Now if there’s a problem at the plant, there’ll be enough water stored to see us through the outage,” Cllr Lawlor explained. “It’s really great to finally have this over the line.”