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Monday, October 26, 2009
ONE of the major challenges in the years ahead will be to ensure the water we drink is safe.
Fact is, at present, that some people are getting sick from the water they consume.
For several years there have been concerns about the quality of drinking water and an ESRI report earlier this year found, for example, that most households in Ireland have been supplied with contaminated water that violates EU standards.
Water quality expert Dr Frances Lucy, of IT Sligo, is now warning that contaminated water, blocked pipes, and invasion of our lakes and rivers are health and environmental issues facing our water supplies and freshwaters.
"For years, we have taken our waters for granted and, while attitudes are changing, unless we plan properly now for the coming decades, water crises, such as the cryptosporidium epidemic in Galway, in 2007, will become more frequent," she said.
We need to be realistic about the issues around water quality in Ireland, both from an environmental and public health perspective, and put measures in place to maintain and improve quality across all sources, according to Dr Lucy.
Problems are often ignored until is too late. For example, one public water supply from the Shannon system was recently affected by a taste problem due to fouling in a drinking water plant.
We need to act now to prevent more of these incidents, Dr Lucy urges. Her warning comes in advance of an international public workshop, Water Quality – Issues We Cannot Afford To Ignore, in Athlone, this Wednesday.
The EU has stipulated that drinking water quality must be monitored and reported on every year, but the authors of the aforementioned ERSI report felt the issue has not captured the public imagination and deserves much greater attention from the public and policymakers.
But, they also said that maintaining water quality called for particular skills and expertise, as well as resources, and questioned whether all local authorities were equipped to guarantee drinking water quality. Many counties were too small to hire a full-time expert, they maintained.
They highlighted high concentrations of cancer-causing substances, byproducts of the improper chemical treatment of biological contamination.
"These problems can be addressed. For example, county councils could outsource the operation of drinking water facilities to specialised companies, or responsibility for water services could be transferred to a single national authority," they went on.
Describing the situation as alarming, the authors of the ERSI report stated: "The water we drink should be safe. The cryptosporidiosis outbreak in Galway in 2007 reminded us that it sometimes is not. But bad water quality does not only cause acute health problems. It also causes chronic ailments, including cancer."
Breaches ranged from over 10% in the case of enterococci bacteria to nearly 70% for fluoride and arsenic. The paper, compiled by Nicola Commins, Seán Lyons and Richard Tol, said drinking water in 2007 failed to meet at least one of the EU standards in numbers ranging from 52% in rural north Cork to 100% in densely populated urban areas.
"At first sight, these results are alarming. There are substances in Irish drinking water that make people ill," they stressed.
Cutbacks in spending because of the recession are worrying. The last programme by the Department of the Environment for water and sewage investment was estimated at €5.9 billion, but only €1.2bn was spent. Further cutbacks can be expected in the next three-year programme.
Several reports on the situation have been published by the EPA and Dara Lynott, director, EPA Office of Environmental Enforcement, has emphasised the need for sustained investment to deliver clean drinking water.
Between January and September 2008, the EPA received and assessed 283 notifications of failure to meet drinking water standards, audited 59 water treatment plants, issued 47 legally binding directions to 15 local authorities requiring specific actions to improve the security of their supplies.
Galway County Council was prosecuted for failing to comply with an EPA direction. The EPA has new powers to enforce action by the local authorities to improve water quality. There’s a serious problem with private group schemes, which both source and distribute water in rural areas. Many such schemes do not have any treatment of water.
A number of expert speakers will address the Athlone workshop. The keynote address will focus on the link between cryptosporidium in the environment and public health. Dr Thaddeus Graczyk, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, US, will discuss the subject in an international context.
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