Co-operative spirit helps to transform small scheme into a state-of-the-art water producer

IT’S one of the smallest group water schemes in the country – made up of local householders and farmers – but now it has been lauded as being one of the best in the land.

The Coole Group Water Scheme is made up of just 20 houses and 12 farm connections, but it has received a special commendation from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for its state-of-the-art operation.

Split into four parts due to  the M18 motorway project and the flyover bridge to the Coole Park Nature Reserve  –completed back in 2017 – the scheme has gone from strength-to-strength since.

Chairperson of the Group Scheme Committee, Clare native Brendan Hogan, said that the roadworks, had in a sense, proved to be a blessing in disguise with a new pipework and connections provided as part of the project.

The scheme was conceived in the early to mid-1980s when the local householders had little prospect of getting connected to the main Gort scheme and decided to source their own water from a nearby borehole well.

Now the scheme has been kitted out with a €125,000 treatment plant involving sand filters, an ultra-violet light reactor system and a chlorine dosing system.

A feature of their system is that the chlorine for the treatment of the work is manufactured on-site using the raw material of common salt: the only one of its type in the West of Ireland.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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