Contamination risk to half of county’s water supply

Date Published: 24-Feb-2011

A total of 32 sources of drinking-water supplies in County Galway, which serve a population of more than 44,000, are “at risk” of contamination – almost half of these have “inadequate treatment” for the cryptosporidium bug.

The 32 at-risk water sources are indentified in an Environmental protection Agency (EPA) report into the quality of drinking water in Ireland, which sets out a list of corrective actions Galway County Council must undertake at the water supplies in order to eliminate the risk of contamination.

The local authority has supplied to the EPA a list of ‘corrective actions’ it intends to carry out to ‘make safe’ the water supplies and to remove the risk of contamination – if it fails to meet its own targets for completing the upgrade works then it faces prosecution and fines from the EPA.

The EPA report was published in the same week the Department of Environment allocated grants of a whopping €18.4 million this year for Galway County Council which should ensure that the local authority meets its timescale targets of upgrading the at risk supplies by the end of 2011.

The at-risk water sources are spread right across every corner of the county from Ballinasloe to Clifden and include water supplies that serve as many as 6,800 people and as few as 180 people.

In all, 44,500 people are using water supplies that are “at risk”. The EPA has stressed that the fact that these 32 water sources have been identified on a ‘black list’ – the Remedial Action List – doesn’t necessarily mean that the water is unsafe for human consumption.

For more see pages 1 & 10 of this week’s Connacht Tribune