Update on the Water Supply Situation February 5th 2010

5th February, 2010

At the City Council Meeting on 1st February 2010 it was agreed that a further report on the water supply situation would be issued. The situation since Monday night has been somewhat difficult. Due to the continuous high level of demand being placed on the Roundwood Water Treatment Plant and the necessity to carry out essential filter bed cleaning works there has been a reduction of 15 million litres per day in output from the plant. Coupled with this a rise in demand occurred when some restrictions were eased in order to improve levels of service to customers. As a consequence of these events storage levels at Stillorgan Reservoir fell in the early days of the week.

Production levels at Roundwood will be restored as soon as is possible but it has to be remembered that all water treatment plants have been operating at full capacity in order to try to meet demand and there is always the possibility of loss of production if routine maintenance cannot be carried out as has been the case over the last month.

A re-introduction of restrictions by each of the Dublin Region’s 6 Local Authorities has resulted in storage levels now beginning to rise again.

Today we have 699 million litres in storage at Stillorgan Reservoir. In the absence of any further loss of treatment capacity and by maintaining the current level of restrictions until after this weekend (Monday Feb 8th) we should be in a position to begin the easing of restrictions from early next week. This would include a change in the night time restriction which will be altered to a 8PM to 6AM regime.

It will be necessary to continue to impose some level of restriction on supply for a considerable time to come. This will however be confined, as far as is possible, to times that will have the least impact on customers.

Leaks on watermains are being detected and repaired and this will continue to be the case. The detection of leaks will be helped by the rise in pressure that will occur as restrictions are eased.