This article is from page 17 of the 2008-01-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
CLARE’S county manager has ad- mitted that Clare County Council will “have to up our game consider- ably” if it 1s to reach the targets set for it in the first report on the Provi- sion and Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland, 2006 – 2007.
Alec Fleming said that while the re- port was favourable in many respects the council has a lot of improvement works to carry out.
He said that the three areas re- quiring improvement included the upgrading of the county’s treatment plants, the operation and mainte- nance of the water schemes and the
monitoring of the water sources.
All of this will require more staff and money; money the manager said he does not have.
Clare County Council, like other local authorities, no longer receive 100 per cent of the capital fund- ing required for such projects. This means that the council must find €80 million from its own coffers.
While such money is collectable through levies, the county manager fears that such funding will be dif- ficult to find.
“IT welcome the report. It brings out issues. They are serious issues and they have to be addressed urgently and quickly,” he said.
Published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the report gives an overall favourable report to the drinking water in Clare, while highlighting a few serious concerns.
The EPA was particularly con- cerned with the low level of compli- ance with the trihalomethanes stand- ard at 88 per cent.
Trihalomethanes remains on the surface of the water when it is treat- ed only with disinfection rather than UI Kouce
Supplies in Ennis, Ennistymon, West Clare New and West Clare Old reported concentrations that were unacceptably high.
The standards for trihalomethanes
are tightening later this year, making this a number one concern.
Compliance with the indicator par- amedic values was above the nation- al average in water supplies in Clare, but there was a notable improvement required in the iron concentration in the water.
Water supplies in Clare were fully compliant with 23 of the 26 chemi- cal standards, with just one failure to meet fluoride standard and two fail- ures to meet lead standards recorded. Compliance with water regulations for the county were above national average at 98.2 per cent although concerns were expressed about the Ennis town supply.
For the report the EPA analysed 529 check and 54 audit samples dur- ihnteaA 0) Oley
Although private group’ water schemes in Clare were generally of a higher quality than those in the ma- jority of local authorities, the report found that there was still a number of quality deficient schemes dur- ing 2006 whether three or the 11 schemes monitored contaminated. Two of these were also contaminated during 2005. Compliance with the coliform bacteria parametric value in private group water schemes re- mained problematic and dropped from 63 per cent compliance in 2005 to 58 per cent in 2006.