Today marks UN world water day, a day used to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.
However, in Carlow and Kilkenny, two local councillors have criticised the level of investment in maintaining urban Water supplies.
On Thursday, there was a widespread outage in Carlow Town, and there was another severe outage in the Brownshill area of Carlow at 1am on Friday morning.
Speaking on the KCLR Daily, Carlow Cllr. Andrea Dalton said that residents experiencing brown water following a restoration should run their taps until it becomes clear.
“People are experiencing issues with brown water and low pressure, but if they just run their taps until it goes, when there is a water outage, it takes a while for the water to flush back through”, she advised, before noting that “Irish Water are very much the tail wagging the dog, its a huge investment, there is money going, but probably not enough money, I don’t know how much might be the figure that’s required.”
Meanwhile, Kilkenny Councillor Pat Dunphy said that funding for Irish Water was way off the mark, following the news that nightly water disruptions will once again affect the Castlecomer area for the next week.
Residents in Clogh, Moonenroe, Arda, Coolbaun, and Castlecomer Town will face nightly water disruptions from 9pm to 9am, until the 31st of March.
“I was speaking to one of the Irish Water people there recently, and I think there’s about €1.3 billion coming from the government into capital investment”, the South Kilkenny Councillor noted, “the overall amount that’s needed to do everything, the amount that’s needed to do up new treatment plants, upgrading treatment plants, so that you can have more housing built, and bad pipes almost everywhere at this stage, you’d need €60 billion”
He finished by saying that that is a “huge difference, you’re way off the mark.”
