This article is from page 6 of the 2011-02-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
LOCAL businesses and members of the public in north Clare have criticised Clare County Council’s handling of latest sewage contamination in the drinking water supply in Ballyvaughan.
This is the forth time in the past year that a boil notice had to be placed on the Ballyvaughan water supply, with farm slurry or domestic waste the likely cause of the contamination.
Following a previous contamination in October of last year, Clare County Council promised to set up a text alert service, which would allow local people to be warned that the water was not safe to drink.
However, local people have criticised Clare County Council for not informing them that the water was dangerous to drink, with the local authority only releasing a warning on their website last Friday, February 4, almost a week after the contamination was first noticed.
According to local shopkeeper and tourist centre operator Jim Linnane, he was only notification of the outbreak when Clare County Council asked him to put up a sign warning the public in his shop, three days after the outbreak was first noticed.
“The only notification I got about this was a phone call from a lady in the Environment Section of Clare County Council last Monday or Tuesday. She called asking me to make a sign and put it up in the shop to warn people that the water was unsafe. This is days after the water was bad,” he said.
“We got no notification from Clare County Council that the water was not safe to drink again. Normally we get signs and posters, which are put up to warn people but not this year.
“It’s a ridiculous situation. In this day and age it is completely ridiculous that we cannot have a water supply which is safe for human consumption. We are going backwards. We could drink the water 15 years ago and it was fine; this situation is ridiculous.”
Clare County Council issued a statement last Friday, February 4, requesting that people in the Ballyvaughan area submit their mobile phone numbers to the council if they wished to be included on the boil water text warning system. They also indicated that the current boil notice would be lifted once the Ballyvaughan water system is connected to the main regional supply scheme next month.
Anyone who wishes to be part of the text warning scheme should contact Clare County Council Water Services Section on 065 6846427.