Sir, – The shortage of water for Dublin gets worse because the population there continues to grow. The population on the east coast continues to grow because of bad planning. The populations around the midlands are asked to pay the price. They quite rightly object.
What happened to the spatial strategy of 10 years ago, which was to develop seven or eight centres of population throughout the country? With these households dispersed to various centres throughout the country, rather than congregating in Dublin, the prospect of acute water shortages would be greatly reduced. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Paul Gallagher (August 3rd) is quite right in pointing out that Dublin’s considerations of supplementary water supplies do not address advanced waste-water treatment.
The need for such a massive increase in supply – half again the present consumption – relies on more outdated projections of unsustainable population growth. Nor does it promote simple conservation that could bring consumption down, rather than increasing supply. Per person, we consume roughly 160 litres a day against Denmark’s 116 litres a day.
In fact, only a fraction of the water supply to homes and businesses needs expensive treatment for drinking. In urban China, a two-supply system is now standard.
Ground-water also offers hard-pressed local authorities supplementary supplies, and the local authority should be commended for its work at Portarlington in tapping into aquifers locally to reduce dependence on the unreliable quality and quality of water from rivers such as the Barrow.
While our ground-water supplies urgently need more protection from surface contamination, the studies of Irish groundwater suggest that half of the known reserves are a viable source of drinking water, yet only 2 per cent are used.
But the most critical issue which was not considered in the context of Bord na Móna’s proposal is the cancer-causing by-product of the chlorination of peaty water, trihalomethanes [THM].
These are produced when water with organic material, such as run-off from peat soils, is treated with chlorine.
Prolonged consumption of drinking water with high THM levels (or even lengthy showering) has been linked to diseases of the liver, kidneys, bladder and central nervous system, and with increasing risk of cancer
According to the Environmental Protection Agency's report The Provision and Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland, THM levels in 16.1 per cent of public water supplies and 31 per cent of public group water schemes now exceed the World Health Organisation's recommended limits. THMs are expensive to remove.
The EPA report calls this an “emerging issue” but has not responded to repeated requests for research into the worrying trend, which may be caused not only by the drainage of peatlands for extraction and forestry but by algae growth fuelled by nutrient run-off from agricultural activities.
The proposal to move water from one catchment area to another is not environmentally sound and highlights the unsustainable growth of Dublin. It also relies on a big-buck engineering solution that will overwhelm the range of more environmentally friendly solutions that could secure Dublin’s water supply into the future. – Yours, etc,
