Navan wakes up to a dry Bank Holiday Monday

Full-scale water cuts in Navan on Bank Holiday Monday have prompted a call for investment of €0.5 million in the town"s Liscarton waterworks. The call was made by local Fianna Fail councillor, Tommy Reilly, who was appalled at Monday"s water cuts, not just for the inconvenience caused to consumers but also on account of damage done to domestic appliances and central heating systems. All of Navan and outlying areas woke up to no water first thing on Bank Holiday Monday morning. By afternoon, shops and supermarkets had sold out of still bottled water. A Meath County Council spokesperson yesterday (Tuesday) said that the supply had been fully restored by 2pm that day. She added that a technical fault at the Liscarton plant had caused the cuts. 'This is the first time this has happened in a number of years,' she said. The Liscarton plant had been inspected on Sunday when it was in full working order. 'Unfortunately, the fault happened after the inspection,' the spokesperson said. Once the fault was found, the local authority was able to get it fully operational quite soon. Cllr Reilly, however, said he was 'baffled' that some €7m to €8m had been invested in the Kilcarn waterworks which only served as a back-up to Liscarton, with capacity to supply two million litres per day. Liscarton was supposed to produce a maximum of eight million litres daily but, in fact, was supplying 13 million litres per day, he said. The investment required to upgrade Liscarton was only about €500,000, he added. Fine Gael county councillor Jim Holloway said it was incredible that a town which had more than doubled in size since the house-building boom began was 'as yet without a resevoir capable of supplying a town designated as the primary centre for development in Meath under the Regional Planning Guidelines'. He said this lack of basic infrastructure was 'a measure of how Navan has been neglected over the years of plenty during the so called Celtic Tiger'. He added he would call for a report to be presented to Navan Town Council"s monthly meeting next Tuesday, 4th November, on the cause of the breakdown in the system and what measures had been put in place to ensure that such disruption did not happen again. The local authority spokesperson, meanwhile, outlined the work to put in place a major new water supply system for Navan, the first part of which will be two major reservoirs, at Proudstown and Carn Hill, which will be interconnected. She said that the local authority was upgrading the Navan/Mid-Meath Water Supply Scheme with contract works underway for laying new water mains at Carn Hill, Johnstown. Also on the way is a new water treatment facility at Dowdstown and a expansion of the Proudstown reservoir. The completion date for this new infrastructure is 2012.