Renewing water pipe network needs to become priority

Meteorologists and weather forecasters have been telling us the unusually cold weather we have experienced during the past two winters, where temperatures have plunged to -15 degrees Celcius in places, could become more common over the coming years. If they are right, then this country can expect to experience at least one prolonged period of freezing weather once every year. If that is the case, then the issue of how Ireland's water infrastructure copes with bitter Scandinavian-type conditions and huge temperature swings of up to 20 degrees Celcius within the space of 48 hours - as happened in December - deserves particular scrutiny from local authorities and central government. Indeed, the incoming government should make it a priority to commence a programme of systematic replacement and renewal of the country's old cast iron pipe network, part of which failed during the recent thaw, leading to widespread water cuts and rationing over the past fortnight. Maintaining vital public services such as the water supply needs to become a priority for the new administration rather than pursuing expensive vanity projects such as the much-vaunted multi-billion euro Metro North light rail system from Dublin city centre to the airport. In a country where money is now so scarce, can we really afford to be building shiny new transport projects with questionable economic viability when we can't even get the basics right? All of northern Europe has suffered one of the harshest winters on record in 2010, yet only on this island has the public water supply been in crisis. This should tell us something about where our priority investment needs to be. It is not acceptable that residents in many parts of Meath were left without running water for so long, some for as many as 10 days or more, over the Christmas holiday. It is even less acceptable that some householders in Ballivor faced their third Christmas in a row with no water. The prolonged water cut-offs meant that thousands of residents of this county and others were forced to rely on the kindness of neighbours, friends and relatives simply to have a wash or a shower, and were forced to buy bottled water by the gallon in order to flush toilets and for cooking purposes where water tanks were not provided by the local authority. However, what has riled residents more than the loss of their water was the tardy response of Meath County Council to their plight, and in particular, the lack of information from the local authority over the Christmas period when some people found it impossible to even contact the council's emergency number. Putting satisfactory contingency arrangements in place to deal with such emergencies over the Christmas holiday period should, in future, be a priority for Meath County Council. Local authorities will now have to find money from within their existing allocations to meet the costs of repairing burst and damaged water pipes and badly potholed roads following the cold snap, so funding that had been allocated for spending on the refurbishment of parts of the crumbling mains network will now be diverted to repairs instead. Engineers estimate that about five per cent of the system would need to be renewed each year in order to properly maintain the country's mains network. Unless this target is achieved, it is likely that the creaking infrastructure upon which much of the country depends to deliver water to the taps will continue to leak millions of litres when icy weather hits. At least some of the water losses recently experienced occurred on private property, where owners are liable for failing to promptly remedy water losses once they become aware of the leak. However, what also came to the public's attention in this cold snap was that the underground mains supply had, in some cases, been laid too close to the surface - as little as 18 inches in some cases - making the pipes more vulnerable to freezing. In the UK, the depth is stipulated to be ideally 24 inches and, despite extremely low temperatures there, nothing like the same problems have been evident in the UK as they are here. Now that this crisis has largely abated, one positive consequence has at least been a growing awareness among the population of the need to conserve water as a precious resource, something that will be reinforced when the public water supply to domestic homes is metered as part of a government plan to introduce water charges by 2014, ending the concept of free water in the country. While such a move has not been universally popular, the public's expectation of the quality of a service they are paying for will be considerably higher than now. And that must mean proper and sustained investment in the network that will deliver the water to their homes into the future.