While anxious not to apportion any blame for the recent contamination of water supply in Gorey, council officials have said it was incumbent on Irish Water (IW) to relay news of any potential issues to the public last month.
peaking at the meeting of the Gorey Kilmuckridge Municipal District, Director of Services at Wexford County Council (WCC) Eamonn Hore said IW were notified there was a problem with the water on August 26 and from that point forth were in charge of communicating this news to the public.
“This is not a blame game,” said Mr Hore. “But in the incident management protocol IW insists it takes the lead on the management of communications. There was definitely a break down in communications between August 26 and September 2 when the first statement was issued. It shouldn’t have happened but it did happen. IW is the water authority and in the protocol, they take the lead.”
Between the dates of August 19-23 the water emanating from the Creagh Treatment Plant was not properly treated, resulting in 52 official reports of severe illness and, in some cases, e-coli infections. The problem has since been attributed to a thunderstorm which cut the electricity at the plant, caused a chlorine dosing pump failure and affected the amount of disinfectants in the water. By the time WCC were made aware of the issue (on August 26) it had been resolved.
However, between the dates of August 26 and September 2 Councillor Andrew Bolger made several representations to council officials regarding reports of illness in the Gorey area. He asked whether those reports could be attributed to poor water quality and was told there was not an issue.
“IW were notified of the issue in Gorey on August 26, from that date it wasn’t until September 2 that elected members and the public were made aware of an issue,” said the Fianna Fáil councillor. “I can’t understand why elected members and the public were not told. I felt my representations on behalf of those complaining about the water were not taken seriously, I’m quite disappointed with that, I was told there was scaremongering going on but I felt like I was dealing with the facts, I was told there was no bacteria found, I felt like I was brushed aside, and now we’re dealing with the outcome of that.”
That outcome has resulted in a full investigation being commissioned, the results of which, council officials say, will be made available to the public.
“I can assure you that our investigation will be thorough and transparent, we wouldn’t have it any other way, it will be factual and everything will be out in the open,” said Mr Hore.
“We apologise to the people of Gorey,” added Chief Executive of WCC Tom Enright. “Our job now is to have a full investigation and to find out what happened and put measures in place to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Explaining why Cllr Bolger had not been informed of any potential issues with water supply, Mr Enright said: “We weren’t aware of the extent of it; we knew there was some problem but we thought it was a minor problem at that stage. We didn’t realise what had happened until some time later.”
Both the Chief Executive and the Director of Services were at pains to stress that any issues with water supply had now been fully resolved and that it was now safe to consume.
“I can assure councillors that the water quality in town for the last four weeks has been very good, but I accept it will take some time to restore confidence in the water for the people of Gorey,” said Mr Enright. “There’s a huge amount of work been undertaken to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
Having met with IW last week, Mr Hore said a number of improvements had already been carried out at the plant in Creagh.
“The following actions have been carried out since the incident: repairs of equipment, servicing of all the instruments, we’ve also agreed an increased servicing frequency with IW, strengthened on-site testing, prepared a request to IW to strengthen staff compliment, and there’s an assessment of the system for further planned upgrades with IW.”
Grateful for the updates and for the measures taken by WCC thus far, Cllr Oliver Walsh felt a representative from IW should have been present at the municipal meeting to discuss the outage in public.
“It seems to me today that WCC staff and councillors have been hung out to dry; we should have someone here from IW, it’s a bit disappointing that there’s not,” said Cllr Walsh. “It highlights the need for IW to sit down and have talks with each local authority on the future investment for the water across the county. There needs to be more give and take between IW and the county council, when there’s a bit of trouble, it seems like the council are the ones put out to the forefront.”
