New plant provides 660,000 gallons of water daily

RESIDENTS in South-East Clare should be able to escape the inconvenience of public water rationing introduced by Clare County Council in Ennis and Tulla, thanks to a €30 million upgrade of a water treatment plant in Limerick City.
The expansion and refurbishment of the Clareville Water Treatment Plant facilitates the daily provision of 660,000 gallons of treated public water for householders in Parteen, Meelick, Westbury, Shannon Banks and Clonlara.
Limerick City Council sanitary services engineer, Dave Keane, revealed the treatment plant is designed to cater for the growing needs of Limerick City and parts of Clare over the next 20 years.
In fact, Mr Keane confirmed the plant had the capacity to treat an additional 3.74 million gallons of water daily, along with the requirement to provide 19.6 million gallons of water for the city and parts of South-East Clare.
Asked if the new plant could supplement public water supplies in parts of Clare where shortages are causing huge problems, he pointed out the necessary infrastructure is not in place to transfer the huge volumes of water required. However, he added the city council could provide water in tankers for Clare County Council to distribute as a short-term measure.
Once the water crosses the boundary into South-East Clare, Mr Keane said the responsibility for distributing treated public water rests with Clare County Council.
While Limerick City Council is the main provider of public treated water in South-East Clare, 28% of the raw water, which is the equivalent of 5.5 million gallons, comes from the Head Race canal in Clonlara. The remainder comes from the Clareville canal.
Welcoming the new upgrade, Laura Ryan from the Limerick Co-ordination Office told The Clare Champion the facility provides high quality drinking water for up to 90,000 people in Limerick City, parts of Limerick county and South-East Clare.
“The upgrade of the facility forms a pilot project for the first Public Private Partnership in the Irish drinking water industry. The value of the upgrade contract is €30m and it provides a revolutionary new actiflo process for treating water,” she said.
Since it was first built on the banks of the Shannon in the 1890s, the Clareville Water Treatment Plant has been meeting the needs of the city and adjoining areas. A number of innovations have been key to achieving project objectives. In water treatment itself, a technology new to Ireland, actiflo colour removal coupled with dunsenflo high rate filtration has been successfully introduced. This treatment system was proven to be effective in Canada on waters that were ostensibly harder to treat than the River Shannon, which is known to be difficult.
Another unexpected innovation is in plant wastes. Municipal plants normally send waste to landfill at 20% plus dry solids; Clareville now utilises sludge drying to 90% dry solids, dramatically reducing water volumes with savings that offset additional costs.
Treated water is also now recycled rather than returned to the river with environmental risk advantages, while providing protection against plant contamination by cryptosporidium.