Wednesday, December 11, 2013

High quality rating for Clare in EPA public water report

Microbiological compliance in Clare County Council’s public water supplies was 100% for the third successive year in 2012, according to a new report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The report, entitled “The Provision and Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland: A Report for the Year 2012”, also shows Clare’s chemical compliance levels to be amongst the highest in the country at 99.2%.

The EPA also featured a summary of boil water notices (BWN) and water restriction (WR) notices active or issued to consumers by Clare County Council during 2012. One water restriction notice, affecting approximately 80 customers of the Ennis Public Water Supply, remained active at the end of 2012 while no new boil water notices were issued during the year.

Clare County Council is responsible for the operation of 21 Public Water Supplies (PWS) serving a population of 79,913. The EPA is the supervisory authority over public drinking water supplies and provides powers of enforcement to ensure actions are taken where the quality of public drinking water is deficient.

Anne Haugh, Director of Water Services welcomed the findings of the EPA’s report adding: “The findings are a tribute to the hard work of Water Services staff, as well as the considerable investment made in upgrading public drinking water supplies across County Clare. In light of the future transfer of water services functions to Irish Water it is important that our consumers are aware of the high standards which have been achieved by Clare County Council in the provision of drinking water supplies to date.”

In Ireland, the majority of drinking water comes from public water supplies (84.8%) with the remainder provided by group water schemes and private supplies, including wells serving single houses.

Each year, the EPA collects and analyses over 250,000 Water Services Authority monitoring results for all drinking water supplies. The current drinking water quality report assessed the safety and security of drinking water supplies based on the results of Water Services Authority monitoring carried out in 2012 and enforcement by the EPA in the same period. Analysis is carried out on three groups of parameters, namely microbiological, chemical and indicator.