Pity the 30,000 residents of Ennis in Co Clare who have been advised to boil the public water supply for the next two years or risk becoming seriously ill. And what about the health of tourists or other visitors to this holiday region who may not be aware of the risks? The quality of drinking water is deteriorating and it is time the Government tackled the causes of pollution, rather than attempt to clean up the resulting mess.
Dumping chlorine into water supplies, as local authorities do, kills most bacteria. But it cannot cope with cryptosporidium, a water-borne parasite that can prove fatal if ingested by old or very young people and, in general, makes people wretchedly ill. The water supply for Galway city is still unsafe to drink and there have been outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis in Carlow and Roscommon towns within the past two years. The growing seriousness of the situation was recently highlighted by the Environmental Protection Agency when it estimated that one in five public water supplies is operating under high-risk conditions.
The main source of this parasite is human or animal faeces and drinking water is being polluted by way of farmyard slurry, municipal sewage and septic tanks. The algae blooms of the great lakes of the west and midlands represent gross water pollution in action. But investment in local authority sewage treatment works and farmyard remedial action is seriously deficient. Neglected septic tanks are another hazard and there is no legal requirement on householders to maintain them properly.
In this scheme of things, the destruction of aquatic life on the Castletown river last week because of the release of farmyard slurry in Northern Ireland was just another environmental calamity. The Castletown flows into Dundalk Bay and is one of only two rivers on the entire east coast where salmon numbers are sufficiently robust to allow angling activity. Now stocks have been damaged by human negligence and it may join rivers like the Liffey, Boyne and Slaney where salmon fishing is banned.
Warning notices from the EU Commission on the need to protect water quality have had little effect. An outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in Ennis in 2005 brought the promise of a new treatment plant. But contracts were only signed this week. And warning notices on the need to boil drinking water are expected to remain in place until 2009. It is simply not good enough. Water quality should be protected through major investment and inspection programmes. Now that Green Party leader John Gormley has charge of the Department of the Environment things may - and certainly should - change.