Households left high and dry without water supply

Date Published: {J}

By Denise McNamara

Thousands of householders were left without water for 24 hours – but Galway City Council has apologised for failing to communicate the planned water outage across much of the city and suburbs last week.

The supply for thousands of householders was cut off for up to 24 hours and left many of the best known restaurants and pubs struggling to stay open.

The water supply was planned to be cut from 9pm on Thursday to allow a new connection to a 450mm watermain as part of the major roadworks on the Seamus Quirke Road.

It was to affect the supply in Rahoon, the Westside, Shantalla, parts of Salthill and Knocknacarra until 6am on Friday. However the disruption spread much wider, cutting off water across the city centre, particularly hitting Dominick Street and the array of pubs and restaurants in this part of the west.

Some householders did not get reconnected until late Friday night, with low pressure particularly affecting Cruachán Park and Claremont Park and other areas experiencing significant air locks.

Some homes were worried about the quality of the water when it returned as it was reported to be cloudy across much of the affected areas.

Due to a “miscommunication error” the public was not informed ahead of the disruption.

“We got a considerable amount of flak from businesses – and restaurants in particular – for failing to notify them of the planned water outage,” a spokesman admitted.

“We put our hands up on Friday morning and apologised for the miscommunication error. Galway Bay FM did not put out the notice and it did not go out on the website. We did have a problem getting the message out but we’ve certainly learned our lesson.”

The out-of-hours phone service was inundated with callers on Thursday night asking why the water was cut and wanting to lodge a complaint. Dozens of calls were also taken by staff all day on Friday.

“There are a couple more connections to be done and there may be further outages. But we will definitely give sufficient notice in the future,” explained the spokesman.

“The main problem was that people didn’t expect it and couldn’t plan for it.”

Director of services for transport and infrastructure, recreation and amenity Ciarán Hayes apologised publicly for the mistake on Galway Bay FM.

And thousands more householders in Oranmore, Claregalway, Athenry, Tuam and Spiddal will be without water today (Tuesday) due to works being carried out on the Luimnigh water treatment plant.