Chemists asked to solve Dublin's water issue

The Irish Independent: Chemists from the UK are being sought to try to solve the water treatment issue leaving much of greater Dublin without proper supplies. The city is 30 million litres below what it needs to keep taps and toilets in homes and businesses flowing after a 10-day old problem at the Ballymore Eustace plant in Co Kildare.

Production was cut by about a fifth, prompting damning criticism from restaurateurs who claimed Ireland was a third world country hit by water shortages in summer and winter regardless of the weather.

Severe restrictions will hit supplies in Dublin city and county and into Kildare and Wicklow. Many people will have no water between 8pm and 7am each night until Monday at the earliest.

Dublin City Council engineers held talks with the Environmental Protection Agency over the treatment crisis after a change in the make-up of raw water coming into Ballymore Eustace from the nearby Poulaphouca reservoir.

The council has its own engineers and lab specialists on site in Kildare and is also seeking advice from consultants in the UK with expertise in the area. The supplies are a different colour and turbidity or cloudiness than the system is used to handling. It is suspected the fine, dry summer followed by periods of heavy rain over the last few weeks has created an unusual balance in the raw water. Pollution is not an issue and the quality of water making it to taps is not a concern....

A holy water spigot at St. Teresa's church on Clarendon Street in Dublin, shot by Kaihsu Tai, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license