'There is a problem with people tapping off the connection'

LOST WATER IN KERRY:ALL PARTS of the country have problems with unaccounted-for water, but in 2010 the losses were at their worst in Kerry. Then just under 60 per cent of drinking water produced by the county council never made it to the taps.

The council estimates that about 25 per cent of leaks are on the consumer side of the stopcock. However, a spokesman said the county had a particular problem with “illegal, unauthorised or unknown connections” to the mains supply.

“There is a problem with people, generally for one-off houses, tapping off the connection and it’s extremely difficult to detect.”

This problem could be worse in Kerry than for its neighbours. For a rural county it has a high proportion of public water supplies, with 65 public schemes with approximately 3,500km of water mains. “This is a high figure, even when compared with other counties on the western seaboard, such as Mayo or Galway,” the council spokesman said.

The large and dispersed nature of the network also creates difficulties in identifying and repairing leaks compared to counties on the eastern seaboard, where there is a large mainly urban population in high-density areas, and a shorter pipe network.

The cold winter caused problems for the council, not only because of burst pipes, but because taps were left on in unoccupied holiday homes.

There was also one commercial premises where there was a particularly bad leak over the Christmas holidays, which was not noticed for a considerable length of time, the spokesman said.

Kerry has an ageing mains network with many of the water pipes made of materials that have reached the end of their working life, such as asbestos cement pipes and some PVC pipes laid in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as cast-iron pipes which are much older.

The spokesman added that the council was investing more than €18 million in replacing old or defective water mains over four years.