Cool, clear and 100% compliant water

MICROBIOLOGICAL compliance in Clare County Council’s public water supplies was 100% for the second successive year in 2011, according to a new report published today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

The report, entitled The Provision and Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland: A Report for the Year 2011, also shows chemical compliance levels increased from 99.1% in 2010 to 100% in 2011.

The EPA also featured a summary of boil water notices (BWN) and water restriction (WR) notices active or issued to consumers by Clare County Council during 2011.

One water restriction notice affecting approximately 80 customers of the Ennis Public Water Supply and one boil notice affecting Ballyvaughan water remained active during 2011 from previous years.

One new boil-water notice concerning Whitegate water was issued during 2011. However, at the end of 2011, no boil notices remained in place.

Clare County Council is responsible for the operation of 21 Public Water Supplies (PWS) serving a population of 79,913.

The EPA is the supervisory authority over public drinking water supplies and provides powers of enforcement to ensure actions are taken where the quality of public drinking water is deficient.
Councillor John Crowe, chairperson of the council’s Environment and Water Services Strategic Policy Committee (SPC), has welcomed the findings of the report.

“I am delighted to see that microbiological compliance in Clare PWS was 100% in both 2010 and 2011. The findings of this report are a tribute to the hard work of all our Water Services staff, as well as the considerable investment made in upgrading public drinking water supplies across County Clare,” he added.

“In light of the future transfer of water services functions to Irish Water it is important that our consumers are aware of the high standards, which have been achieved by Clare County Council in the provision of drinking water supplies to date.”

In Ireland, the majority of drinking water comes from public water supplies (84.8%) with the remainder provided by group water schemes and private supplies, including wells serving single houses.

Each year, the EPA collects and analyses over 250,000 water services authority monitoring results for all drinking water supplies.

The current drinking water quality report assessed the safety and security of drinking water supplies based on the results of water services authority monitoring carried out in 2011 and enforcement by the EPA in the same period.

Analysis is carried out on three groups of parameters, namely microbiological, chemical and indicator.