Mayo residents left without water 'for days'

Residents on Achill Island are having to live without a clean water supply for more than three weeks at a time due to an inadequate water treatment plant.

Achill councillor Paul McNamara has outlined the deplorable situation for families and businesses on the island who have been putting up with the sub-standard utility for a number of years now and called for action to be taken to resolve the situation.

He told members of Westport Belmullet MD at their September meeting: “Water problems came up as a main issue on my election campaign and since then it has only got worse. The main sufferers are the people in the upper parish. There are regular bursts and this results in loss of capacity in the reservoir and by the time the bursts are fixed and water restored, the reservoirs are completely empty.

“Over the last number of months Uisce Eireann have been bringing in tankers of water for locals and a number are very frustrated with this. Some households have been without water for 24 days. There is chaos in any house when this happens and also any breakdown in supply, especially in larger premises such as schools, means a plumbing contractor has to come in to fix the problem.” He welcomed that the storage capacity in the Corrymore treatment plant is being upgraded, saying: “There was about two hours supply before and now there is seven hours, but this is still not sufficient for a plant that size, which according to Uisce Eireann, should have at least a twenty-hour supply.

“So when a burst occurs, the plant shuts down and people are without water from two hours later and then for a number of days. This is constantly happening.” He added: “It’s fine for Mayo County Council that it can say the water is not in their care anymore and is the responsibility of Uisce Eireann, but we forget, people are paying a property tax to Mayo County Council and we expect that when we turn on a tap, water will come out.

“So I ask that Mayo County Council contact Uisce Eireann to request a workshop, to ask what can be done with the network. We have seen €3 billion being made available now for water networks and I believe Achill should be in for a whole upgrade to cover the parish. I have raised this several times already. There are probably around 400-500 new connections to the system in the last five years yet no extra capacity has been added in the reservoirs either.”