The habit of drinking bottled water may be partly through caution. Perhaps over caution. But often there are reasonable grounds for doubt or fear. Take Trim in County Meath, for example. Under a proposed new water scheme, if the outsider can correctly interpret the reports, the intake of fresh water was to be taken from a point on the Boyne downstream of the sewerage outfall into the river. That is, from the treated sewage.
There was a huge reaction. Now, it may be that the treated stuff was quite OK and wouldn't affect the quality of the water being taken in, for it would also be considerably diluted with the general flow of the river. But there have been second thoughts as a result of the protests. Now a new scheme, costing half a million pounds more has been approved by the Minister, Brendan Howlin.
Mr Bruton is quoted in The Meath Chronicle for Saturday, May 18th as saying that the scheme would eliminate the discharge of untreated or partially treated effluent into the Boyne, as well as involving the construction of an outfall pipe from the sewerage works to a suitable point well downstream of the water pipe intake. Any fears that the residents of Trim might have, he said, can now be allayed. "The people of Trim deserve the highest quality of water, and they will get this quality." The councillor who led the protest, Phil Cantwell, said he was "over the moon".
Water is a complex problem and we are not great at it. Before the prediction of dry, dry summers, admittedly, we instigated arterial drainage which rushes water out to sea. Could none of it be conserved in reservoirs, even now? The ENFO office in Dublin (Information on the Environment) has a pamphlet on Groundwater which makes you think. In the first place, 99.5 per cent of the world's water cannot be used because it is saline or is locked up in glaciers and ice sheets. (That may be changing.) Most of the remaining water is present in rocks as groundwater and less than 0.01 per cent is present in rivers and lakes.
In Ireland, about 25 per cent of the water we use is from groundwater. We need to protect that, because once it is polluted, e.g., by septic tanks and farmyard activities or in cities by refuse dumps, it cannot be used for years. It is a complicated story. well set out in this pamphlet. The lessons are various, but the main point is: we need to take water more seriously. It's not for ever.