eolas magazine issue 47 water report by bmf business services

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Safeguarding our water for our future

Protecting and improving Ireland’s water resources Minister for Housing, Local Government and Housing Darragh O’Brien TD spoke at Water Ireland 2021 about how the Government plans to both protect and improve Ireland’s water services, including funding plans for Irish Water and how best to manage the country’s multiple private rural water sources. “Water services are a basic human necessity and are essential to the daily lives of our citizens, and indeed to the development of our economy,” O’Brien begins. “We’ve all become aware of the significance of water in ensuring hygiene during the pandemic. Our Programme for Government contains over 30 commitments specific to water matters and our priority is to overcome infrastructure deficits that impact on the provision of safe and secure drinking water supplies that lead to environmental damage and pollution.” The past decade was a significant one in terms of reform in Irish water services as well as the governance and practice of water protection. Irish Water has now

been firmly established as the national public water utility, “delivering a coherent national approach to water services and strengthening the delivery and management of water services investment”. Governance, accountability and oversight arrangements are in place with economic regulation by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU), environmental regulation by the EPA, while An Fóram Uisce and the Water Advisory Board have specific roles to oversee the actual performance of Irish Water itself.

services,” O’Brien says. “That capital investment accounts for up to 20 per cent of all construction activity in the country. Complex challenges still remain, maintaining a high level of investment in the sector over future investment cycles is absolutely vital to achieving greater environmental compliance, to overcome challenges in water and wastewater treatment infrastructure, to address unacceptably high water leakage rates, to service future housing and development needs and to ensure the security of supply across the country.”

“Irish Water is now spending in excess of €1.5 billion per annum in operational and capital investment in water

Significant reforms are still required, as O’Brien acknowledges. At the end of February 2021, he published a policy

Safeguarding our water for our future

paper agreed at government titled Irish Water: Towards a national, publicly owned, regulated water services utility. The paper sets out the Government’s expectations for the next steps of the water transformation process.

Parts of the plan, such as the movement of local authority staff working in water management into Irish Water, which has been opposed by the country’s largest trade union, SIPTU. “I acknowledge the workers’ loyalty to their local authorities and their status as public workers, as well as public service delivery,” O’Brien says. “I am also very conscious of the enormous transformation involved for local government in future years. The paper recognises this, and I will work with the County and City Managers Association to ensure that local authorities are not left unsupported as a result of the transformation programme. I also want to acknowledge the workforces of Ervia and Irish Water for their contribution for the progress made to date in modernising our water services. “I don’t underestimate the challenges nor the complexities we face, but I am certain that it will be possible to work together to ensure a better future for both citizens and stakeholders than our current working arrangements allow. It’s important to acknowledge the vital role played by the rural water sector in servicing the areas outside the public water system. The past year has been disruptive and challenging to the sector.”

Private water sources Nearly one fifth of Ireland’s population get their water from private sources consisting of private group water schemes or private household wells. Just under 200,000 are served by almost 400 private water schemes across the country. Over 170,000 rural

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“Our ambition is to develop Irish Water as a world class, publicly owned utility providing excellent employment opportunities for its workforce,” O’Brien explains. “The Government wants to see Irish Water become the workplace of choice for those local authority staff right across the country who are currently delivering water services on behalf of Irish Water.”

“I don’t underestimate the challenges nor the complexities we face, but I am certain that it will be possible to work together to ensure a better future for both citizens and stakeholders than our current working arrangements allow.” households depend on private household wells for their domestic water needs. In such a significant area for rural Ireland, O’Brien sees opportunities for growth and investment. “Group water schemes provide an invaluable service to families, farms, and businesses in rural Ireland,” O’Brien says. “They symbolise the best of our rural communities ag obair le chéile and the Government is committed to protecting the rural water system by providing equity of treatment and financial support. We continue to support the National Federation of

Group Water Schemes in its pivotal role in representing the community owned rural water services sector. For capital investment needs, the multi-annual Rural Water Programme provides funding certainty for the continual improvement of the rural water services themselves. “Under the National Development Plan, the Rural Water Programme has already provided €73 million in its current three-year cycle. The Programme for Government commits to the take-up of Irish Water’s Small Towns and Villages programme, running from 2020-2024, 4 81

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government to address water quality, climate change and biodiversity loss in an integrated way. I plan to launch a revised and strengthened third River Basin Management Plan in 2022 to protect Ireland’s water quality and to ensure we have a well-protected environment and vibrant communities for future generations.” Protecting Irish waters will require strong additional measures including new rules around the protection of water drinking sources, mitigation of agricultural impacts, the proper management of the 500,000 septic tanks, careful forestation practices, controls on the extractions of water, actions to prevent soil run-off and many other measures, O’Brien says.

which will provide water and wastewater growth capacity in smaller settlements through investment by Irish Water of almost €100 million. Complimentary to the existing programme, my department is currently considering the issue of villages and settlements that do not have any public wastewater infrastructure.”

Improving Ireland’s water standards On the wider environmental front, water in Ireland now faces a number of complex pressures and increasing demands. While some water bodies have improved over recent years, overall water quality in Ireland is now in decline and has been for some time. Today, just over half of Ireland’s surface water bodies are meeting the standards set by the EU’s Water Framework Directive by achieving “good” status or higher. Reversing this deterioration within the statutory timeframe set by the EU, before 2027, remains one of the Government’s toughest challenges and

O’Brien admits that “effective measures are now urgently required”. “The EPA’s State of the Environment report sets out in stark terms the present and future challenges we face as a country and as a society in relation to water,” the Minister says. “The report highlights pressures such as raw sewage discharge to water from 35 towns and villages, the loss of pristine water quality status from over 500 areas in the 80s to just over 20 in 2020 and increasing nutrient damage in rivers and marine environments. “To meet these challenges in a sustainable way, we must act on three fronts: institutional reforms; the investment required to ensure we meet EU drinking water and wastewater regulations while supporting balanced urban and rural development; and we need to protect our rivers, lakes and groundwater by including improved measures in the next River Basin Management Plan, modernising our legal framework to work across

“Our Water Environment Legal Code also needs substantial attention to give coherent effect to the relevant EU directives,” he adds. “The interconnectedness of our environmental challenges means that we need an integrated policy response. The Government’s third cycle River Basin Management Plan will ensure that these actions and methodologies needed to tackle water quality issues will address climate change obligations and biodiversity losses. By working coherently in this way, we can achieve better environmental outcomes.” Concluding, the Minister emphasises his belief that Irish water services are on the right track and sounds optimistic about the work that has been done and is to be done: “We have made demonstrable progress in addressing the challenges we face and the Government will continue to deliver strongly on the commitments to water services contained in the Programme for Government. Our sustained investment in infrastructure itself is required to ensure continued supply of good quality drinking water and appropriate and effective treatment of wastewater to protect our water waste. “Against a pattern of historic underinvestment in water services and environmental management, this robust policy agenda will ensure that water services will continue to be delivered and developed in line with the needs of all our citizens and in keeping with the principles of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.”

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Safeguarding our water for our future

Delivering the water infrastructure Ireland needs €50 million a year on energy which should drive third-party investment in energy solutions for its operations”.

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Industry transformation

Irish Water Managing Director Niall Gleeson reflects on his first two years leading the water utility and looks to the future of water services. Casting an eye over his two years as Managing Director of Irish Water, Niall Gleeson says that it would be “an understatement to say that they have been eventful”. Overall, while regarding it as a positive experience, he acknowledges that the water utility still faces huge challenges. “Before I joined Irish Water, I knew that Ireland’s water infrastructure was in poor condition. However, it was only once I became Managing Director that I realised the scale of what must be done. Having said that, Irish Water has been making real progress,” reflects Gleeson.

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Irish Water has set about repairing the leaks which result in the loss of around 40 per cent of our treated water each day. As such, the utility is investing €150 million per annum, or 8 per cent of its annual budget, fixing leaks. At the same time it is investing in new infrastructure, including new water and wastewater treatment plants. “Last week, I was in Mayo to inspect three wastewater treatment projects with a combined cost of €20 million,” Gleeson says, adding: “These projects will protect the water quality of Killala Bay and the Moy River, which are vital for tourism in the area.” Addressing decades of underinvestment 84

is an enormous challenge for Irish Water but Gleeson says it is now making significant progress even amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Although some projects are progressing at a slower rate, the water sector’s supply chain has responded well to the pandemic.

Post-covid recovery Across Europe, sustainability is now central to the post-Covid recovery, with the European Green Deal functioning as the roadmap to a climate neutral continent by 2050. At the same time, Irish Water’s day-to-day business is one strand of the UN’s Sustainability Goals: clean water and sanitation. “In this context, sustainability is something we strive to achieve every day and we are examining alternative energy sources to reduce our carbon footprint,” the Managing Director asserts. “Irish Water has a big challenge in that the vast majority of its electricity consumption comes from the grid. Simultaneously, it has a large landbank and that could be leveraged to attract private investment in renewable energy projects. “Irish Water is the largest public sector energy user in the state and spending

Currently, Irish Water is undergoing a transformation programme that will see it separate from the multi-utility company Ervia. Instead, it will become a standalone public utility, one that will integrate the day-to day operation and delivery of water services into its own organisation structure, in place of the current local authority SLAs, on a phased basis. Irish Water wants to see current water services employees, whether local authority or Irish Water staff, working together in the one organisation to improve water services. “Our proposal is that staff transfer from the water sections of local authorities to Irish Water. At the moment, we are in discussions with the trade unions and local authorities on how we undertake the transfer; we want people to want to make the transfer and there are great opportunities in Irish Water. “The investment from government has been consistent and while Irish Water thinks nationally, it acts locally. For instance, we operate 800 water treatment plants and around 1,000 wastewater treatment plants around the country. We are always going to be local as that is the nature of our business. Our aim is to have a public utility with a direct workforce. That makes sense for the business we are in.”

GDA resilience Continued economic growth in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA), allied to climate action obligations will pose a significant challenge to the resilience of the water supply in the region. Recently, Irish Water has completed several projects in the GDA, including an upgrade of the Leixlip Water Treatment Plant, though these have all been relatively minor. “We get 85 per cent of Dublin’s water from the Liffey, up to 40 per cent of the flow of that river. Even with significant reductions in leakage we need to have an alternative supply to reduce this dependence on one river,” Gleeson contends.

Safeguarding our water for our future

Once the Eastern and Midlands Region Water Supply Project is completed, Irish Water will have spent €1 billion on leak repairs, and overall leakage will be down to below 20 per cent. This is comparatively low by international standards and the utility is aiming to reduce this figure even further. Alongside enhanced efficiency, Gleeson emphasises that the Water Supply Project will be essential to support the projected growth of the Greater Dublin Area, and outlines that this is a common approach right across Europe and beyond.

Non-compliance with European directives While there is precedence for noncompliance with European directives, the Managing Director says that Irish Water is making real progress in this sphere, particularly in reducing the volume of untreated sewage discharged into the sea.

This is exemplified by the Arklow plant that has recently received approval from Minister Darragh O’Brien TD. Having initially applied for planning in the 1990s, appeals and legal challenges stymied the delivery of the project for two decades, until Irish Water began a new site selection and planning process in 2014. Construction of the project will now commence in late 2021. We are working hard to maximise

“We are getting close to spending €1 billion this year and we want to ramp that up to €1.5 billion to deliver the future water and wastewater infrastructure Ireland needs.” treatment capacity and quality at the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant with a major upgrade project. However, it will run out of capacity towards the latter half of this decade. The Greater Dublin Drainage [GDD] project, which is currently remitted to An Bord Pleanála for a fresh planning decision, is badly needed. It must be delivered in a timely manner to provide the additional treatment capacity required to supplement the Ringsend plant from the mid-2020s. Both plants are needed to support the sustainable growth of the greater Dublin area up to 2050.”

Management Planning process to reduce or eliminate these pressures at source and improve the water quality of our rivers and lakes,” he says. Highlighting the need to sustain momentum in investment, the Managing Director acknowledges continued strong government support to capital funding but references the fact that, as a consequence of its funding model, Irish Water competes with schools, hospitals and social housing for resources. “We have made an ambitious submission for funding to the NDP for the next 10 years

Vision Looking to the longer-term, Gleeson concedes that the water utility “must continue to build confidence in its ability to deliver infrastructure”. The focus, he indicates, is to deliver its current capital commitments in water and wastewater projects over the next five-to-eight years. “Then we need to address how we support sustainable growth, particularly in our cities, but also in our small towns and villages. We must develop a national standard for drinking water and wastewater.

and that equates to about 10 per cent of the Government’s capital budget. “We are getting close to spending €1 billion this year and we want to ramp that up to €1.5 billion to deliver the future water and wastewater infrastructure Ireland needs,” he concludes.

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“A major challenge is identifying the required location, and then negotiating the compulsory purchase and planning process and legal challenges to these processes. Everyone wants a wastewater treatment plant in their town or village, just not beside their home,” he comments.

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A pipeline from the Parteen Basin on the Shannon to supply water to Dublin and Midlands is an option which appears to deliver the widest benefit to the greatest number of people, with the least environmental impact and in the most cost-effective way. “The Shannon is an enormous resource. It is a giant, slowmoving body of water that is effectively one of the biggest reservoirs in the British Isles. From an environmental impact perspective, the proposed pipeline, with a 1.6-meter diameter, will have a relatively low impact,” the Managing Director observes.

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“While good wastewater management is critical, there are also other more significant pollution pressures on our rivers and lakes. As we improve wastewater treatment systems, all stakeholders will need to work collaboratively through the River Basin 85

Safeguarding our water for our future

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Water management: Commission consultation launched

In late July 2021, the European Commission launched an online public consultation seeking views on the impending initiative to review the lists of pollutants occurring in surface and ground waters, alongside associated regulatory standards. The consultation will run until 1 November 2021. The public consultation is particularly significant in the context of implementing the European Green Deal’s Zero Pollution Action Plan and broader efforts to increase efficiency and safer use of water. A December 2019 evaluation of EU water legislation determined it to be “broadly fit for purpose”. However, it identifies investment, implementation, the integration of water objectives into other policies, chemical pollution, administrative simplification and digitalisation as areas requiring improvement. Specifically, therefore, the upcoming initiative seeks to address the inadequacies relating to chemical pollution and fulfil the legal obligation to regularly review the list of pollutants. Simultaneously, it will consider the acceleration of implementation, including through the use of digital tools, while supporting EU member states in overcoming polluting substances challenges which are inhibiting compliance with legal obligations and realisation of environmental objectives.

The initiative is also intended to align with the implementation of the EU Strategic Approach to Pharmaceuticals in the Environment, while supplementing parallel reviews to improve the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and the Industrial Emissions Directive, alongside the implementation of the new Drinking Water Directive. Running in six-year cycles from 2000 onwards, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) has acted as the primary legal instrument for the protection of European water. Its objective is to clean polluted waters and maintain the cleanliness of clean waters. In Ireland, it is given legal effect through the European Communities (Water Policy) Regulations 2003. In conjunction with the Environmental Quality Standards Directive (EQSD) and the Groundwater Directive (GWD), the WFD applies to fresh, coastal, and transitional waters, as well as ground waters. Through the regulation of specific pollutants and the establishment of corresponding regulations, the Directive ensures an

integrated approach to water management. “All Europeans should benefit from clean water. Ensuring good quality of surface and groundwater in Europe is paramount for human health and for the environment. Pollution caused by pesticides, PFAS or from residues of pharmaceuticals must be avoided as much as possible. We want to hear your views on how this can best be achieved,” asserts Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevi�ius. With the Commission’s adoption of proposals planned for Q3 2022, the public consultation is aimed at respondents with a general level of knowledge and interest in pollutants in water and is intended to complement an expert consultation, workshops with stakeholders and consultation via the mechanisms of the Common Implementation Strategy (which supports the Water Framework Directive implementation). It is possible to contribute to the consultation via a questionnaire: https://bit.ly/2WjAwFd

Safeguarding our water for our future

Irish Water: Delivering a safe and resilient water supply

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“Our primary approach is always going to be to drive down demand through leakage reduction and water conservation,” Grant says. To that end, Irish Water has its National Leakage Reduction Programme and the Water Stewardship Programme, where it works with business to industry to promote conservation. Concluding, Conlon says: “The transformation of our public water supplies will take time and investment over many decades. The plan is required to ensure that we address current issues and future challenges in a uniform way.

Mairéad Conlon

Miriam Grant

Miriam Grant and Mairéad Conlon of Irish Water’s Asset Planning Section discuss how the 25-year National Water Resources Plan will deliver a safe, secure, sustainable, and resilient water supply to each of its customers. us is to prevent this level of service to customers worsening as our infrastructure ages. Aside from that, we also face several future challenges to supplies. The population is growing, over the next 25 years we expect to see an extra 1.2 million customers on the network, so it is important that we plan for that. We have new environmental regulations on water extractions to ensure that Ireland is compliant with the Water Framework Directive and to protect and improve the environment.”

Irish Water’s asset base consists of roughly 530 water resource zones, 700 water treatment plants, over 1,000 individual extraction points and about 63,000 km of water mains. At present, over half of these resources do not provide the sufficient level of service.

The key objective of the National Water Resource Plan is to give a one-in-50 level of service to all customers, performance levels tracked by the number of unwanted water supply interruptions in a number of years. The plan is to ensure Irish Water has supplied all customers, no matter where they are, with security of supply of highquality water. The three pillars that the plan is built upon are Lose Less, Use Less and Supply Smarter, aimed leakage reduction, water conservation and better water supply routes through initiatives such as rationalisation.

“While our customers mightn’t notice this because we have the supply on a day-today basis, we really struggle when we get into periods of high demand, like during dry weather events in the summer and in the winter when we have extreme weather events like a freeze thaw event,” Conlon explains. “The main challenge for

“The National Water Resources Plan is not just a plan, it has an Strategic Environmental Assessment and an associated Natura Impact Statement that goes with it, and as part of that there is a consultation process, which allows full transparency and public participation in our plans. We ask for stakeholder feedback into the plan and take it on board in finalising it. “This allows the public to get involved, to understand what is happening and the level of risk and to ensure that we can develop a robust plan going forward into the future.”

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“There’s a real focus on the environmental impact and how we need to understand the hydrological yield of all our sources,” Grant says. “That is to ensure that we will have enough water available to meet growing demand over the next 25 years. Fundamentally, it is a plan that supports economic growth in Ireland but also safeguards the environment and takes account of the Water Framework Directive, the River Basin Management Plan and the standards that have been established.”

“It is the first such plan to be developed in Ireland and it allows us to prioritise delivery of solutions and ensure that we minimise environmental impacts. It will also allow Irish Water to meet the requirements of the new environmental and drinking water legislation. Key parts of the plan are an understanding of the supply-demand balance and that feeds into us understanding the level of service

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Safeguarding our water for our future

Climate change and Irish water resources

Aerial view of Corrib River and Galway City

Conor Murphy, professor of geography at Maynooth University, speaks to eolas about how climate change will affect Ireland’s water resources and how having access to longer drought records now means that we have a better understanding of projections of future drought. “Until recently, drought was somewhat a forgotten hazard in Ireland, but we had the 2018 drought and the spring of 2020 drought as well,” Murphy, who also sits on the National Climate Change Adaptation Committee and has acted as expert reviewer for reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, begins. “Looking at how drought may change or manifest in the future is an important question.” Discerning changes in hydroclimate

variables is a major challenge, Murphy says. In Ireland, there are typically very short-lived records, with the monitoring of river flows across the country starting mostly in the mid-1970s. Murphy’s work has been focused on exactly that task over the last number of years, leading him to rescue the large amounts of data that are held on paper records in Met Éireann’s archives. “They have given us valuable insight into the range of extreme events we have experienced in the past and our

ability to track and document ongoing changes,” he says. The second challenge is that hydrological factors can be subject to confounding factors such as land use change, agriculture, urbanisation, extraction, and discharges. These can all confound and make complex the ability to detect changes in a catchment. In order to deal with this issue, Murphy and his colleagues have been working on identifying a reference

Safeguarding our water for our future

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hydrological network where those hydrological factors are minimised. Again, this involves the plumbing of the longest records in an effort to extend them back in time. “Our work has resulted in Ireland having one of the longest continuous rainfall records anywhere on the planet,” Murphy says. “We have been able to develop a multi-century rainfall series from 1711 to the present. It reveals to us several things. Firstly, the extent of the variability and change that is evident over these long-term records. We can see, for example, that the driest summer in our records is the summer of 1800. A lot of the very dry extremes happened very early on in our records. Decadal rainfall, from 1711 to the present, shows a clear trend of wetter weather over the last 300 years, whereby the last 10 years has been the wettest decade in the entire series. There are some issues with going back to the 1700s and 1800s; for example, we suspect that the early winter periods are too dry.” Murphy and colleagues have also been using rainfall records from across the island, from 1850 until present, inputting them into European scale

analysis to examine variability, change and trends, for example in summer drought, looking at accumulated deficits over the summer months of June, July and August. “What we see across Europe is a mixed bag in terms of the direction of trend, but it is worth highlighting significant trends in Ireland towards more severe summer drought events,” he says. “What you can see across the European scale is that trends are often largest and most significant in Ireland’s east, indeed even in different time periods.” Murphy continues: “An important question to ask is how this links with impacts. It is not always the case that when a drought event occurs, it results in socioeconomic impact, and we have a huge amount of data available to us. Over the last number of years, we have been systematically going through newspaper records all the way back to the 1730s, with a focus on the period from 1900 onwards. Again, we see a very clear picture, similar to what the observations are showing us; that recent decades have seen a paucity of water or hydrological impacts relatives to the previous decades. Look at decades before the 1950s, for example, particularly the 1930s and the extent of

drought across the country. “The 2018 drought in the recent context is an extreme event, but when we get into longer historical periods, it is not an extreme event and there are far more severe droughts. The key thing that our records tell us is that 2018, for shorter duration periods, was an extreme event but there are more severe events in terms of the duration of accumulated losses possible in Ireland. This speaks to other work that we have undertaken, looking at the possibility of persistent dry runs in Ireland. Compared to England, Scotland and Wales, Ireland has a persistent likelihood of long dry runs which are important to take account of in the context of drought planning. “The spring drought of 2020 was remarkable in terms of the deficits. Again, looking at the three-month accumulation period, we can see that it was an extreme event but there are other extremes that surpass it. It is interesting to note that in spring we see a trend towards less severe droughts, despite this 2020 did occur. Luckily for us, despite the context of last year, it was preceded by a very wet February.” When attempting to address the

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question of the changes projected for hydroclimate variables for the coming century, there are modelling chains to hypothesise what kind of society may be realised, how greenhouse gas emissions may change in the future, and the concentration of atmospheric change to use a climate model that is then run through impact models to give us a sense of local impacts in order to

give us an idea of local impact models. “What we see in our research using the most up-to-date climate models are different levels of impact from the sustainable future scenario to a more fossil fuel heavy one. In terms of drought, it is the summer that is most important, and we are seeing a range of significant reductions in summer river

flows for the catchments we have assessed so far,” Murphy explains. “With more emissions in the future, these decreases would become more severe. When we trace that through to future drought magnitude and frequency, looking at it seasonally, fundamentally what we see is a decrease in both magnitude and frequency in winter and an increase in

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magnitude and frequency in summer.” Concluding, Murphy stresses the need for the kind of information his work has captured in order to understand how our water supply might change: “Fundamentally, good decisions around resilience depend on the types, diversity and quality of information used to inform adaptation. I think it is really important that we go beyond just using climate models to integrate those historical records, to stress test our water management plans and adaptation actions. If we do not, we risk building fragility into our decisions. “We need to not just think about climate change, it does not happen in a vacuum, we also need to think about the other pressures on water resources in terms of population growth changes and demand. Once we understand existing vulnerabilities, we can identify

actions that might deal with them. They need to be assessed in terms of their social acceptability, economic appraisal, regulatory context, and technical feasibility. Out of that kind of context, we come up with an acceptable set of measures, which should be focused on reducing future vulnerability, again taking account not just of climate change, but of nonclimatic pressures. It is critically

important to test those preferred measures in terms of their robustness to future change, doing sensitivity analysis to evaluate how successful they may be and looking at integrating adaptation principles in terms of least cost actions, robust activities that make sense now no matter what the future is etcetera, setting out pathways in terms of when risks emerge and when actions should be initiated.”

“We need to not just think about climate change, it does not happen in a vacuum, we also need to think about the other pressures on water resources in terms of population growth changes and demand.”

Conor Murphy Conor Murphy is a professor in the Department of Geography and the ICARUS climate research centre at Maynooth University. He has worked extensively in recent years on developing our understanding of historical droughts in Ireland, together with the assessment of climate change impacts on hydrology and water resources and how best to integrate climate information into decision making. He has published over 60 papers in leading international journals including Nature, Science and Nature Climate Change and his research is currently funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Research Council, the EPA and Wellcome Trust.

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Non-domestic tariffs: Providing transparency and equity for business customers

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New non-domestic water tariffs will apply to all Irish Water non-domestic customers from 1 October 2021. This implementation date has followed several postponements due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on businesses across Ireland. Previously, there was a wide range of

charges for the provision of water and

services and introduces harmonised

non-domestic tariff levels, tariff

wastewater services to non-domestic

charging arrangements for the supply of

categories, methodologies, applications,

customers of Irish Water across the

water to a non-domestic premises and

billing arrangements and billing cycles

country. These charges were complex,

for removing wastewater from their

across the country. This evolved under

not transparent, and potentially

premises.

the previous water industry structure,

inequitable.

overseen by 34 different local authorities and 10 town councils. This resulted in over 500 separate 92

The original decision to introduce this

The new Framework sets out how and

new tariff structure was taken in July

how much non-domestic customers will

2019, with an implementation date of

be charged for water and wastewater

May 2020.

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In March 2020, a decision was made to defer this implementation due to the considerable uncertainty for businesses as a result of the necessary public health restrictions that were put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

“The new Framework sets out how and how much nondomestic customers will be charged for water and wastewater services and introduces harmonised charging arrangements for the supply of water to a non-domestic premises and for removing wastewater from their premises.”

A decision was taken in November 2020 to implement the new Non-Domestic Tariff Framework on 1 May 2021. This timeframe was to provide advance notice of the tariff changes to allow Irish Water customers to plan accordingly for 2021. However, with the implementation of further required restrictions in January due to the impact of the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and many businesses remaining closed, a decision was taken in March this year, in conjunction the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Irish Water to defer the new tariff framework implementation.

A three-year transition arrangement will be put in place by Irish Water to assist customers who may be faced with a large annual bill increase. Under this arrangement any annual bill increase above €250 will be spread over three years. In addition to this, any customer facing an annual bill increase of over €750 will have the increase capped at 10 per cent per year for the duration of the threeyear transition.

Taking into account the limit on bill increases, the impact of the new tariffs in the first year of billing will be: •

46.4 per cent (85,059 connections) will see bill decreases;

•

50.4 per cent (92,511 connections) will see bill increases of less than

•

0.2 per cent (285 connections) will see bill increases greater than €5,000.

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The CRU considered this revised timeline necessary to provide sufficient notice to individual customers of their new tariff as businesses were closed and were unlikely to be in a position to receive relevant communications from Irish Water in advance of the change.

The CRU considers that the new tariff framework will overall be a positive development for the sector and a more equitable solution for all non-domestic water customers.

€250; •

1.6 per cent (2,899 connections) will see bill increases of between €250 and €500;

•

1.5 per cent (2,725 connections) will see bill increases of between €500

For more information: Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) T: +353 1 4000 800 E: info@cru.ie W: www.cru.ie

and €5,000; and 93

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Tapping into a sustainable future

As head of Resources at Accenture in Ireland, Aoife Aherne is acutely aware of the imperative to act on the dual climate and biodiversity crises facing the planet. She sees a critical role for the water sector in enhancing environmental sustainability and contributing to the net-zero agenda.

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Over the past 15 years, I have been privileged to work with leading utilities as they transform and innovate to drive shareholder value. The scale of the challenge is now greater than ever, with the planet facing a perilous 1.5oC temperature increase sooner than expected, according to the recent IPCC Climate Change report1. I’m encouraged and excited by what the next decade will bring and how the utility sector will respond. The water-energy nexus will play a critical role, and the water sector has an opportunity to take a 360-degree approach that will positively contribute to a net-zero future.

The opportunity for the water sector The role of the energy industry is widely understood; less obvious is the part that the water industry can play. Provision of clean drinking water and wastewater treatment is an energy-intensive business. Nonetheless, the industry can play a significant role in net-zero, the circular economy and biodiversity goals through initiatives that include: energy efficiency and leakage remediation to reduce energy demand; on-site installation of renewable generation to power production (e.g., solar PV, wind,

1: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ 2: https://www.pub.gov.sg/annualreports/annualreport2020.pdf

and biogas); where possible aligning plant energy demand to times of peak grid or on-site renewable generation; reuse of sludge waste to fuel wastewater treatment plants with biogas or recovering elements like phosphorous to manufacture semiconductors and lithium batteries; and, finally, the promotion of nature-based solutions and sustainability by design in all infrastructure investments. I take great inspiration from the Public Utility Board in Singapore2 whose ground-breaking work in water recycling, engagement with their consumers to

promote conservation and their use of floating solar PV to supply green energy for their operations shows what can be achieved.

Conformance and performance — innovation required

The challenge for water utilities is twofold: innovating within their own operations using energy-efficient equipment and building more resilient infrastructure, while also innovating to drive customer engagement and adoption — fostering shared responsibility for outcomes. Success will hinge on bringing people on the journey that water and wastewater production is an energy- and resource-intensive process and dispelling the idea that water is a limitless resource. If we all use less, our collective impact goes beyond ensuring we have sufficient water for life and economic development—it also reduces energy usage, which will further our net-zero ambitions and sustain biodiversity and our natural ecosystems.

Harnessing digital and data

Access to real-time data helps mitigate the operational risks water utilities face.

With more digital power and greater centralisation of technology comes greater responsibility. Utilities, as custodians of critical national infrastructure, must be mindful of cyber risk exposure. While threats from bad actors interfering with the water supply have so far been considered low, it’s not hard to imagine how increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals might see an opportunity, as they did in the recent colonial pipeline ransomware attack in the US Leading-practice cyber security grounded, for European utilities, by the NIST framework is a key part of the strategy.

A path to shared success Technology is not a magic fix, and transformation requires people and culture to be sustained. Diversity drives innovation and the adoption of an open innovation approach that draws on the breadth of experience and talent available globally, within start-ups and in academia, is needed to accelerate the sustainability agenda in the sector.

utilities, like every other business, to champion sustainability goals — not least because a new generation of prospective employees will expect to see them. The water sector is brimming with opportunities for people to have careers with a legacy. This plays into the culture part, how an organisation’s collective focus on doing the right thing can have a real impact on their business. In the case of water, there is also a need to extend into the public arena, to educate consumers and bring them on the sustainability journey. The water sector can lead from the front, and I am encouraged by examples such as Water UK’s Public Interest Commitments3, that pledge to champion measures through which water companies can deliver on five challenging goals for social and environmental progress. Awareness of the climate change crisis has never been greater, and this has encouraged individual responsibility. This is something that water utilities can harness as they engage customers with a vision of shared success. When the sector is more sustainable, when leaks and waste are better managed, it’s good news for consumers and even better news for the planet — the big win for us all and the one that matters most.

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Some of this is about digital transformation, embracing a wave of technology that has helped other sectors break down silos and drive a system-led business model. One of the big wins with digitalisation is the opportunity for more advanced data analytics. An obvious use case is to scrutinise KPIs that will measure impact and progress against sustainability and net-zero objectives. For water utilities, in many instances all that’s required is a shift of emphasis; for example, from tracking volumes of leakage or consumption to the impact remediation and conservation efforts have not only on capacity but also on energy usage.

A command-and-control nerve centre, fuelled by insights from operations and external sources, like the met office, enables a predictive and elastic approach to managing operations — supporting a release of resource to drive initiatives on the performance agenda. Data modelling and analytics can be used to better understand weather patterns, monitor biodiversity impact, forecast performance and drive improvement against sustainability KPIs.

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Transformation is a challenge, made harder for licensed utility companies because they operate in highly regulated sectors. They must balance operational priorities with strategic imperatives like sustainability. Meeting the need for conformance around regulatory standards, while improving performance to deliver on objectives like net zero, requires innovation.

“If we all use less, our collective impact goes beyond ensuring we have sufficient water for life and economic development—it also reduces energy usage, which will further our net-zero ambitions and sustain biodiversity and our natural ecosystems.”

Aoife Aherne Managing Director Head of Resources at Accenture in Ireland E: aoife.aherne@accenture.com

There is also an imperative for water 3: https://www.water.org.uk/publication/public-interest-commitment/

This content is provided for general information purposes and is not intended to be used in place of consultation with our professional advisors. Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture and its logo are registered trademarks of Accenture

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Safeguarding our water for our future

The challenges facing European water services

Carla Chiaretti, Head of Policy at EurEau, the European Federation of National Associations of Water Services, speaks to eolas about the challenges facing European water services, including the ‘zeropollution ambition’ and the growing impact of climate change on water infrastructure. EurEau is the European Federation of Water Services, created in 1975 with six founding members when the language of the association was French, hence the use of the French for ‘water’ (‘eau’) in its title. Today, in Brussels it represents 34 national organisations of drinking water and wastewater operators from 29 European countries. Its membership consists of both public and private sector bodies. “Water services are an instrument to realise the human right to water and sanitation and by doing so, we protect public health and the environment,”

Chiaretti says, adding: “When EurEau was created, it was established as a network of water professionals to exchange knowledge between experts. Then, environmental laws at EU level developed and we felt the need to establish EU water sector positions. Our experts establish these positions, and we advocate to the EU policymakers. “Water services are very specific because they have environmental and health standards that are established at EU level, in the Drinking Water Directive or the Urban Wastewater Treatment

Directive, but at the same time they are also very national because the management of these services is the responsibility of the member states. The governance of water services is very different from one member state to the next, but also within one country.” EurEau has three priorities, Chiaretti outlines. The first is securing access to water by securing investments in water infrastructure; the second is the protection of water resources from pollution, which is key to the delivery of water services; and the third is the promotion of the sustainable use of

Safeguarding our water for our future

resources “to truly be a circular economy for water”.

The second goal that Chiaretti mentions is the zero-pollution ambition, a “flagship ambition of the European Green Deal”. Chiaretti states that this encompasses both old pollutants, such as those from agriculture (nitrates, pesticides) and mercury, but also the “pollutants of emerging concern” such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and pharmaceutical products. “We think that this topic should be dealt with following the four principles that are enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,” she says. “These are the four principles that govern environmental policy: the precautionary principle; the preventative action principle; that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at the source; and that the polluter should pay. “As water professionals, our members are seeing the growing impacts of climate change. Droughts are becoming more regular in Ireland, and this is also the situation in places such as Sweden and Denmark. We see droughts and also floods, which obviously affects quantity; increasingly, our experts want us to raise the link between these quantity problems and water quality. The European Commission recently published its new Climate Adaptation Strategy which makes the link between

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“In 2015, we started brainstorming on the future of water services and we identified 10 challenges up to 2030,” she says. “The first one is the protection of water resources, our heritage. I use this word because it is used in the Water Framework Directive that says that water is not a commercial product, but rather a heritage that needs to be defended, protected, and treated as such. This is very much in line with Sustainable Development Goal 6 on the UN agenda for 2030 and also the Water Framework Directive itself, which sees the protection of water resources as a fundamental tool for the delivery of water services. In fact, member states are obliged to protect resources, to take measures to avoid deterioration and limit the treatment that drinking water operators have to carry out in order to make water drinkable.”

“We turn on a tap or flush the toilet and don’t think about what is happening before or after. Our infrastructure is underground, often in remote areas outside cities, and only professionals can access that infrastructure because of security reasons. This is of course something that is a negative element when we need to communicate because people don’t see us.” quality and the protection of water resources.

priority for ensuring the human right to water.”

“Another element worth considering here is the possible conflict in the allocation over resources because of course there are different uses for water, each of which are very important to the functioning of our society. It is also important to look at priorities, especially when it comes to water and sanitation. Drinking water should be of

Chiaretti admits that the sector faces a communications problem, specifically at EU level, when it comes to the public understanding of the water sector. “I think it is fair to say that we are a sector that is taken for granted,” she says. “We turn on a tap or flush the toilet and don’t think about what is happening before or after. Our infrastructure is 4 97

Safeguarding our water for our future

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10 CHALLENGES FOR WATER SERVICES IN EUROPE FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS 1.

Protecting our water heritage

Supporting the zero-pollution ambition

Responding to the growing impacts of climate change

Giving water its value in the circular economy

Increasing resource efficiency Increasing the public understanding of the water sector Fostering sustainable economic growth and creating jobs Setting the right price for water services Managing longterm assets in a fast-changing environment

10. Reinforcing the resilience of water services

underground, often in remote areas outside cities, and only professionals can access that infrastructure because of security reasons. This is of course something that is a negative element when we need to communicate because people don’t see us. At EU level, it is difficult to communicate about the sector because we are just one actor in the water cycle.”

OECD ‘3Ts’ approach that promotes

The European water sector invests €41 billion per year and directly employs 476,000 people. It also provides stabilisation when it comes to economic crises, Chiaretti says, because these are jobs that cannot be delocalised. The policy head does, however, admit that the sector suffers from a human resources gap, due to an ageing staff and a failure to attract young professionals for various reasons, including salary.

futureproof what is currently being built

“This leads us to the importance of setting the right price for water services, a price that ensures the sustainability and affordability of water,” she says. “There is an intergenerational responsibility that needs to be taken into account when it comes to the level of service that we need to have in place for future generations. At the same time, we must strike a balance with affordability. We are in favour of cost recovery in order to carry out the necessary investment. We support the

security risks. We are talking about

transparency of the various streams of funding, such as tariffs, transfers, and taxes. We also support all users contributing to cost recovery, including industry and agriculture.” Concluding, Chiaretti looks to the future, including the threats to the sector and the opportunities to and planned: “We are a sector that needs to manage long-term assets in a fast-changing environment. This means that our infrastructure is planned to last for decades, but at the same time we need flexibility to respond and adapt and we need solid lifecycle data to adopt futureproof solutions. “We are also working to reinforce the resilience of water services against infrastructure that is classified as critical in almost all member states. We need to be resilient to malicious acts, but also to new threats such as cybersecurity ones. We have seen what happened in Florida, where a hacker tried to poison a community through the drinking water infrastructure. We also need to be aware of interdependencies in order to ensure resilience with the energy sector.”

Safeguarding our water for our future

Ending the discharge of raw sewage nationwide starts will include Arklow, which is the largest town in the country with no wastewater treatment.”

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Progress is being made with a significant investment of over €650 million. “We are on track to removing the majority of raw sewage discharges by the end of 2025,” continues Tinsley. The benefits of this investment can be seen in towns and communities across the country. “We have invested €250 million to date in eliminating the discharge of raw sewage, prioritising the areas that have the biggest benefits first. These 16 towns have seen benefits including improved water quality in our rivers, lakes and seas; benefits to the local communities including swimmers, surfers and the local tourism industry, as well as protecting our marine life and promoting economic and social development,” explains Burns.

Irish Water is working to eliminate raw sewage discharges in Ireland. Finbarr Burns, Asset Delivery Business Operations Manager and Michael Tinsley, Finbarr Burns Michael Tinsley Wastewater Portfolio Delivery Manager at Irish Water speak to eolas on the progress that is being made on the decades-old practice of discharging raw sewage into the environment. benefitting local communities. By building this new infrastructure we have stopped the unacceptable discharge of raw sewage from the equivalent of 100,000 people.”

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Since 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency has identified 50 areas around Ireland where raw sewage was historically being discharged into the environment. Burns discusses the progress that Irish Water has made since its establishment in 2014: “Irish Water has eliminated over half of the raw sewage that has been discharging into our rivers and seas for decades. We have already built new wastewater infrastructure in 16 towns across Ireland where treatment had never existed before, improving water quality, and

Although substantial progress towards ending this unacceptable practice has been made, there are still challenges ahead. “As there is no wastewater treatment in these areas, we are effectively retrofitting infrastructure into well-established towns. While there’s agreement that this practice needs to stop, it is often a complex process to reach agreement on where new wastewater infrastructure should be built and to acquire the necessary land. We have engaged extensively with communities all across the country and will continue to do this as we progress these essential projects. On behalf of all the team in Irish Water, I would like to thank these communities all across Ireland who engaged with us in moving these vital projects forward,” concludes Tinsley.

W: www.water.ie Twitter: @irishwater Facebook: IrishWaterUisceÉireann LinkedIn: Irish Water

Irish Water has plans in place to remove the rest by prioritising the areas where it can make the biggest impacts first. Tinsley adds: “This year alone we will start works in at least 14 areas around the country where raw sewage has been entering our seas and rivers, with 10 more starting in 2022. The 2021 99

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Group water schemes leading efforts to protect the environment

A smart buffer zone, designed to slow down or capture nutrient run-off in the catchment of White Lough, a drinking water source for Stranooden GWS in County Monaghan.

What do trees and bees have to do with water quality? Quite a lot, according to the National Federation of Group Water Schemes (NFGWS), which is promoting care for biodiversity as a core element of a wider Integrated Source Protection Planning (ISPP) strategy to protect and improve Ireland’s aquatic environment, including drinking water sources, and as a safeguard against the impacts of climate change on the sector.

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Impressed at the novel approach of the NFGWS, two government departments have recently agreed to collaborate by providing financial support towards elements of the Federation’s source protection strategy. In March, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) announced funding for the implementation on seven GWS catchments of targeted measures to mitigate against identified agricultural pressures in ISPPs, while the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (DHLGH) is supporting the development of ISPPs on 14 group water schemes this year and supporting the employment of dedicated staff to further the ambitious environmental objectives set out in the Federation’s six-year strategic plan. This ground-breaking, interdepartmental approach to addressing environmental issues at source catchment level will not only assist in identifying a potential model for such work on more community-run drinking water supplies but has the potential to inform future agri-environmental schemes and other biodiversity and climate action plans. 100

Responding to the emergency Following the declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency by both Houses of the Oireachtas in May 2019, the voluntary Board of the NFGWS responded immediately by assigning development officers with special responsibility for climate action and biodiversity enhancement respectively. A dedicated Biodiversity Enhancement Strategy for the rural water sector was launched in autumn 2019 and, in 2020, a guidance document was published by the Federation aimed at better protecting biodiversity during GWS capital works. Throughout the development of these and other documents, the NFGWS worked closely with the National Biodiversity Data Centre, pledging full support for its AllIreland Pollinator Plan. With a dedicated Climate Action Plan scheduled to be launched at the NFGWS Rural Water Webinar conference in September, Federation CEO, Barry Deane says that there is growing evidence that climate change is happening even faster than was predicted a few years ago, adding:

“The group water scheme sector is determined to do everything it can to contribute to the national and global effort. Focusing primarily on substantially reducing daily water demand across the sector, we aim to reduce the carbon footprint of group water schemes and to build their resilience in the face of weather events that will become more and more extreme in the years and decades ahead. We can only achieve these objectives if we work with natural ecosystems and end our over-reliance on technological solutions to every challenge.”

Protecting the source The Federation’s approach to drinking water source protection underlines the point made by Deane. Since 2005, the NFGWS has piloted low-tech approaches to water protection, as opposed to end-of-pipe treatment solutions. Since then, it has completed the delineation/mapping of virtually every GWS source catchment and has piloted several major initiatives aimed at better protecting sources, including

With approximately 360 privately sourced and community-owned group water schemes (GWS) operating across the country, the sector’s source protection initiatives have the potential to play a key role in achieving the objectives of the River Basin Management Plan (RBMP), the European Green Deal and other environmental initiatives. The pilot projects have inspired two scientifically grounded documents, published by the NFGWS: A Framework for Drinking Water Source Protection and A Handbook of Source Protection and Mitigation Actions for Farming, as well as providing practical examples of targeted actions that enable GWSs to lead and encourage wider participation in their source protection efforts.

Integrated source protection planning

The WHO’s ‘water safety planning’ approach is also at the core of every ISPP, focusing on a continuous improvement cycle that identifies hazards, develops appropriate and targeted improvement actions, and monitors the results of these before the cycle begins again. Funded through the Multi-Annual Rural Water Programme (MARWP), the implementation of these ISPPs on group

Catherine Finlay, Roscommon County Council, and Noel Carroll, general of manager of Mid-Roscommon GWS, at the launch of the ‘I’ve planted a tree and my garden is pesticide free’ initiative.

water schemes in Counties Monaghan and Roscommon has supported farmers installing vegetative strips along critical pollutant pathways on their lands to slow down or capture nutrient run-off. These ‘smart buffer zones’ are just one of a wide range of mitigation actions on farms, that includes fencing around water courses, promoting low emission slurry spreading and reduced pesticide use.

Plant a tree and let it bee In Roscommon, an ‘I’ve planted a tree and my garden is pesticide free’ initiative sought to raise awareness about the link between water quality and biodiversity, highlighting especially the environmental dangers posed by domestic use of pesticides. Primary school pupils across the county were given a tree to plant at home, along with easily understandable educational materials, certificates, and bin stickers to help spread the message.

together for the betterment of the community, in keeping with the ethos of the co-operative movement. In December 2020, the Let it Bee initiative won the European Landowners’ Organisation’s European Bee Award, providing affirmation that Europe is keenly aware of the leading role being played by Ireland’s community-owned drinking water sector in addressing the great environment issues of our time.

Mark Farrelly T: 087 612 4089 E: mark@nfgws.ie W: www.nfgws.ie Twitter: @nfgws Facebook: National Federation of Group Water Schemes LinkedIn: National Federation of Group Water Schemes

The ‘Let it Bee’ initiative involves the provision of honeybees, hives, suits, and the necessary equipment, as well as training and mentoring, to a number of Roscommon farmers in group water scheme source catchments. The habitat required by a honeybee and by wild bees generally has real benefits for water quality also. Bee hotels constructed by a local mental help support group were provided to GWS households to generate awareness about the need to protect and provide suitable habitat and food sources for solitary bees also.

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To date, nine group water schemes have developed scientifically based ISPPs, scheme-specific plans that provide a framework for communities to work together to help protect or improve local water bodies. ISPPs are created through an amalgam of untreated water monitoring results, desktop studies and catchment walks.

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a joint project with the EPA designed to provide a community approach to managing septic tanks. Emphasising the importance of the pilot projects in informing the Federation’s current approach, Deane said: “Although a safe and wholesome drinking water supply can be delivered through effective treatment barriers, we subscribe to the World Health Organisation (WHO) view that sees source protection as the primary barrier to contaminants. The simple fact is that the prohibitive cost of dealing with a contaminant such as herbicide at treatment stage means that we have no choice but to tackle this issue at source and we know that by tackling other contaminants, such as faeces and nutrients, we can significantly improve the performance of our treatment plants and reduce running costs.”

These initiatives perfectly encapsulate the close links between drinking water source protection, the wider environment and local community, with the farmers acting as ambassadors for biodiversity enhancement. They are also centred around social inclusion and working 101

Safeguarding our water for our future

Water capital projects

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Currently, alongside the National Leakage Reduction Programme, there are several major water and wastewater projects being undertaken by Irish Water across Ireland. NATIONAL LEAKAGE REDUCTION PROGRAMME

CORK LOWER HARBOUR MAIN DRAINAGE PROJECT

Each day, Ireland loses 40 per cent of its treated water through leaks. These leaks can be difficult to detect among a vast and ageing pipe network. In cooperation with local authorities, the National Leakage Reduction programme is aimed at fixing 1,500 leaks each month to deliver a more reliable water supply, improve water quality, reduce high levels of leakage, and create new, individual supply connections. While the national leakage rate was 46 per cent in 2018, that is set to be reduced to 38 per cent by the end of 2021, saving 166 million litres of water each day.

The Cork Lower Harbour Main Drainage project is intended to provide enhanced wastewater treatment by establishing the new wastewater treatment plant (WwTP) at Shanbally, County Cork (operational since 2016), as well as repairing and expanding the sewer network to connect additional harbour areas to this plant. While in 2015 the equivalent of 40,000 wheelie bins of raw sewage was discharged into Cork harbour each day, this figure has been reduced to 10,000.

RINGSEND WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT UPGRADE PROJECT ELIMINATING RAW SEWAGE Since 2014, Irish Water has built new wastewater infrastructure across 16 towns and villages, eliminating half of the total raw sewage discharged into Ireland’s marine environment each day. With an objective of eliminating the remaining half, Irish Water has committed to the construction of wastewater treatment plants and network infrastructure to adequately treat wastewater before it is safely discharged. As such, having completed projects in counties Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Mayo and Waterford, there are a significant number of projects in the pipeline in counties Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Louth, Mayo, Wexford and Wicklow.

LEE ROAD WATER TREATMENT PLANT PROJECT The existing Lee Road Water Treatment Plant (WTP) provides around 70 per cent of Cork city’s treated water supply. With an investment of €40 million, the Lee Road WTP project will upgrade facilities. Construction of a new WTP on the existing site is underway and once completed will safeguard Cork’s water supply.

Currently, the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant provides for over 40 per cent of Ireland’s wastewater treatment capacity. However, the plant is currently overloaded and in contravention of the EU’s Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. As such, a major upgrade to the Ringsend WwTP is underway. Ultimately, by 2025, the project is intended to deliver the capacity to treat wastewater for an equivalent of 2.4 million people while meeting standards set by the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. The four key elements of the project are: providing additional secondary treatment capacity with nutrient reduction; upgrading 24 existing secondary treatment tanks; providing a new phosphorous recovery process; and expanding the plant’s sludge treatment facilities.

GREATER DUBLIN DRAINAGE PROJECT The total wastewater generated in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) is projected to increase by over 50 per cent by 2050. As such, the Greater Dublin Drainage (GDD) project will develop a new regional WwTP and associated infrastructure to serve the GDA. Intended to be operational from 2026, the GDD project will have the capacity to provide wastewater treatment for the equivalent of 500,000 people.

ARKLOW WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT PROJECT The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified Arklow as an area in which untreated wastewater is being directly discharged in the Avoca River. As such, the objectives of the Arklow Wastewater Treatment Plant project are: stopping the discharge of untreated wastewater in the Avoca River; providing a WwTP compliant with all legislative standards; and improving the water quality of the Avoca River.

102 Credit: Conor Luddy

Taking pressure off the water network to save one megalitre of water daily

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Here at Cully Automation Ltd., we offer services into various vertical markets and are committed to consistently providing the highest level of quality to all aspects of our work, tailored to address the unique requirements of each client.

Kilkenny City Water Pressure Management Project

At both water treatment plants, a pressure reducing valve (PRV) was supplied, commissioned, and fitted to the specifications outlined by Irish Water, throughout the network critical data loggers and boosters were deployed to six crucial locations to feedback information allowing the PRVs to adjust the water pressure as required. The PRV design specifications allowed for three control mode options, fixed, time based, and flow based, to assist in ensuring the water pressure didn’t and continues not to rise or drop below the required levels.

High pressure in watermains can put unnecessary strain on joints, fittings, and weaknesses in the pipe work. Managing pressure is all about ensuring there is enough pressure to get water to our taps but not so much that it damages the pipes along the way. Our bespoke solutions can provide a range of options designed for our clients’ water pressure management requirements.

A real-time intelligent water network based on flow and pressure data has provided a smart option for Kilkenny City to manage their water remotely using a SCADA platform. The increased reliability of the SCADA platform has allowed for remote operational control, thus improving worker safety as the need to deploy an operative to site has been significantly reduced.

Benefits include:

Summary

As a collective group we offer design, supply, and integration services to assist our clients in planning, development, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of critical infrastructure. Our expertise and experience remain trusted to deliver quality services and products with exemplary standards to all aspects of our business nationwide.

• long term cost savings; • asset management and longevity; • leakage reduction and easily identified leak locations; • cloud based data collection; and

Working on behalf of Ward and Burke Construction Ltd. under the Irish Water pressure management project in Kilkenny City, such results have been showcased. Following the completion of the project it was estimated one million litres of water per day was saved, equating to enough water to supply over 2,700 homes and businesses. The City’s water supply is fed from two independent water treatment plants, Troyswood and Radestown, the water is then fed through trunk mains surrounding the city. Working with two separate plants further added to the complexities of the project as it was critical to keep flow pressures even from both sites, ensuring they continue to work in conjunction with one another.

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• remote monitoring and alarm notifications.

By deploying electromagnetic flowmeters, pressure reducing valves and pressure controllers, with the capability of transmitting data to a SCADA platform, the desired results of monitoring and managing the water network pressure to reduce bursts and interruptions to customers was achieved, along with reduction in pumping, energy and chemical costs and safeguarding the water supply for the city. With the improved levels of control, the lifespan of the assets has also been extended.

T: 01 601 4012 E: Info@cullyautomation.ie W: www.cullyautomation.ie

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Safeguarding our water for our future

UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation water report

Goal 6 of the UN Social Development Goals is “ensure access to water and sanitation for all”. Published in March 2021, the CSO’s Ireland’s UN SDGs 2019: Report on Indicators for Goal 6 Clean Water and Sanitation uses a number of data sources to determine that while drinking water is generally safely managed, gaps remain in wastewater treatment.

Wastewater, 2019 SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

92 1 %

billion

1,100 19⁄172

of Ireland’s urban litres of treatment plants large Irish towns wastewater is wastewater treat Ireland’s and cities’ water collectively collected each day wastewater treatment failed to generated by large in Ireland’s public meet EU standards urban areas sewers to prevent pollution

% 99.9 Proportion of population using safely managed drinking water and sanitation services, 2016 SOURCE: CSO CENSUS OF POPULATION 2016

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Safeguarding our water for our future

Lakes 50%

Groundwater 92% Proportion of water bodies with good water quality, 2020

Treatment

None

1.4

Primary

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Rivers 53%

Urban wastewater safely treated, 2019

Secondary

67.2

Secondary with nutrient reduction

30.4

SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

78,000

Untreated wastewater in 35 towns and villages equivalent to this many people was released into the environment every day in mid-2020 SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Household supply, 2016 SOURCE: CSO CENSUS OF POPULATION 2016

Public mains connection

Group water schemes

Private water schemes

Not stated

105 Credit: Massimiliano Morosinotto