Conserve, conserve, conserve!

To spend £32 million on water conservation in the greater Dublin region over the next four years suggests, on initial consideration, extreme folly in a country of water abundance. Ireland may be classified as water-rich, but it is among Europe's worst for water wasting. What's more, the country is afflicted with leaky pipe networks and hampered by rising pollution adding to supply difficulties, all of which makes our water status a little more clouded.

Allow for accelerating demand, unrelenting urbanisation and global warming - yes, in all probability affecting Irish rain patterns - and we run the risk of becoming as "water-stressed" as any of the more obvious places in the world.

Against that background, the £32 million which Dublin Corporation is spending with British water giant Anglian Water in the interests of water for 1.2 million people and industry is merited, if not essential.

Sceptics should recall water conservation warnings appearing in their newspapers during February after winter rains did not come, and three periods of drought in the eastern region within the past nine months. It was an intensively wet summer, yet it only brought levels at the Dublin region's main reservoir at Ballymore Eustace up to 98 per cent of target to ensure adequate back-up supply.

World demand has tripled since the 1960s - Ireland included - primarily as a result of population growth and food production heavily dependent on high water use, according to Prof David Pimentel, a water resources specialist at New York State's Cornell University. This means saving water "is becoming as important to human survival as saving energy". This does not exclude "water-rich" Ireland.

To produce one kilogram of rice requires 1,910 litres of water, he has established. For a kilogram of beef, the figure is 100,000 litres. Put another way, 11 cubic metres of water is needed to produce a quarter-pounder hamburger. With a quarter of a million more mouths to feed every 24 hours, the extent of the global water demand is clear.

The strain already shows. Aquafiers, like oil wells, have been pumped dry. In parts of the US, notably Texas, and the Middle East this has dramatically cut food production capability. "The Colorado River goes through seven states and parts of Mexico but it's reduced to nothing but a trickle going off into the California sea."

Notwithstanding good water resources on the US East coast and in Ireland, he says there is nothing to suggest that the problem will be eased, unless population issues are addressed and better water efficiency is adopted.

Developed northern hemisphere countries may not be the first to experience extreme `water stress' but will face serious strain on water supplies in fulfilling a 30 per cent increase in crop and livestock production forecast for the next 20 years. Livestock do not consume that much but their feed is heavily water-dependent.

Among the chief culprits piling on the momentum towards an enforced lifestyle marked by water scarcity are governments, by continued subsidisation of water use, and suppliers allowing awesome amounts of water leakage to occur (Ireland has to put its hands up on both counts.) "Subsidisation sends the wrong message," he says, while "between 30 to 50 per cent of water is lost before it gets to the place it is to be used."

Attitudes to water change radically when users are made "pay the real price" of water. It encourages conservation, or at least losing it conservatively. The greater Dublin region has water losses of about 40 per cent, and no consumer pays the real price.

This wholesale wastage in the current global and local climate is indefensible. A Dublin Corporation pilot study alluded to this. Then, the Greater Dublin Water Strategic Study in 1996 showed up the glaring amounts not reaching customers - as much as 176 million litres a day.

"It leaks away through old infrastructure. At least 50 per cent of pipes are over 50 years old, many are made of cast iron and need replacing," explains Tom Leahy, acting deputy city engineer.

The corporation, with Fingal Co Council (FCC), are the only water producers among seven local authorities who benefit from 440 million litres (about 100 million gallons) produced daily for Dublin county and parts of Wicklow and Kildare.

It is fed into the system from the Liffey Waterworks at Ballymore Eustace; FCC's Leixlip reservoir (taking water from further along the Liffey), Roundwood (sourced from Vartry River) and Ballyboden's Bohernabreena Reservoir (the Dodder). Most of it comes from sources - Leixlip excepted - in remote mountain/upland areas and is of high quality - a view endorsed by Environmental Protection Agency reports. In terms of quantity, there is enough to serve the next 20 years.

Usage and infrastructure factors are another story. Some £550 million is needed to upgrade the system over the next 20 years. Bringing Anglian Water on board is an attempt to reach an ambitious target of halving leakages within four years, Mr Leahy says. The local authorities will have to continue the good work after that - similarly, local authorities elsewhere have no choice but to address similar leakage problems.

With the help of EU and Department of the Environment funding, the plan is to find and fix the leaks in conjunction with "area-wide rehabilitation" of mains, concentrated on older parts of the network - the city centre and Dun Laoghaire. There will be traffic disruption as high technology versions of an "ear to the ground" detect leaks and pipes are replaced, but it will not be of Luas-like proportions.

Anglian Water was recruited because of its expertise and the extra short-term resources it will bring in attempting to "get through the initial hump" of trying to reduce leakage quickly, says Brian McKeown, project engineer with Dublin Region Water Conservation Project, which is co-ordinating the initiative.

Information technology will be enhanced to monitor water flow and improve data on the system, including geographical information. The consumer has a big part to play too, Mr Leahy says. The system at present is straining, necessitating reduced pressure at night or at weekends.

If each person reduced their consumption by a gallon a day it would save 1.2 million gallons - the difference between restoring pressure at 6 a.m. and 8.30 a.m. (a peak period when people are washing, having showers, using toilets). "Stopping the tap running for two minutes is a gallon saved."

Where people have been affected by water problems, they easily change their water use habits. Schoolgoing children are also mindful of the need to save water, he says. The new target audience will be those who have had no diminution of service. If they don't embrace conservation wholeheartedly, notwithstanding reduced leakages, it's only a matter of time before they too encounter the hazards of living with a curtailed water supply.

The corporation has led by example, saving as much as 35 million litres a day over the past year. Once conservation is embraced by consumers, water recycling in homes looks set to follow. Anglian Water has already devised the technology for recycling "grey water" from showers/baths. It can be reused in toilets after treatment.