Cork city water supply - suggestions

shnaek

Now that we're without water for nearly a week, I thought it was a good time to ask for suggestions on what can be done, and maybe some people in the know could come on here and tell us whether the ideas are good/bad/possible/too costly/achievable etc.

The system has shown itself to be flawed, and the fact that thousands of people are still without water has proven that we need to do something about it.

So what do we need to ensure this never happens again? A backup pumping station perhaps? One that kicks in in emergencies and provides water to as least flush toilets and wash in?

Or measures around the current station to prevent flooding?

Grants for people to install rainwater collectors in their houses?

Anyone got other suggestions? Because it's clear to me that we need them. Surely we can't leave things as they are.

redwindowdesign

Hi

I think the only problem with what you suggest is the one thing that everyone is talking about at the moment - which is money and the lack of it.

I was fortunate enough not to experience the floods in County Cavan but after seeing what people are going through I wondered if there was anything that could be done.

One idea I have is to try and get one of the large insurance companies onboard to help to provide flood barriers. I am not an expert but I am sure that there may be some form of advertising they could use on the barriers that they provide.

This would also mean that the insurance company who provided any solutions, would receive good PR from local residents who would benefit from any flood defences.

This would encourage people to be provided with insurance services they need from the company who has helped them.

Another bonus would be the fact that if proper defences and solutions are provided, premiums would be reduced because the insurance companies would then not need to handle flood claims as they have provided the flood defences.

The selling point being that installing flood barriers and defences would be less than the cost of any claims brought about by any flooding.

Not sure if this would work or which insurance company would be interested but I suppose it's a start.

items

I would like to make a suggestion. I am not from Cork but we have a water problem all over the country. Their is little to no enforcement of the water regulations. Houses all over Ireland have plumbing systems installed that go against the water regulations. If you think of many of our services like ESB and Gas, many of these services have strict regulations. Why cant water?

The flooding all over the country is causing plumbing problems within households and businesses, some of these problems could possibly be reduced had the plumbing system been installed within regulations.

Ireland could soon see a water rate introduced and I believe it is important before such a rate is introduced the service (water main) must be strictly regulated.

The days of the odd call out from a Co Council member during a new water main connection should be long gone.

Only registered water installers should be allowed install and maintain Irish mains water supply's and waste services.

Having a properly regulated water system would not only benefit the customer knowing that their plumbing systems are at their best it would also reduce the overall mains water usage.

Over the coming months I believe Co Councils all over the country will have many questions to answer, now is a good time to bring up concerns over minimal water regulations.

If anyone has any questions or requires help to push this idea feel free to send me a message.

Best of luck in the clean up, I hope you have a place to call home soon.

shoegirl

shnaek wrote: »

The system has shown itself to be flawed, and the fact that thousands of people are still without water has proven that we need to do something about it.

So what do we need to ensure this never happens again? A backup pumping station perhaps? One that kicks in in emergencies and provides water to as least flush toilets and wash in?

Or measures around the current station to prevent flooding?

We really have a process failure more than equipment failure.

1. Notification procedures need to be put in place to warn people of impending incidents
2. Actions need to be put in place to get emergency plans into action. This weeks response was poor to say the least. I live in the Wellington Rd area, a relatively poor and high density area, yet until Monday the nearest supply of water was nearly 2 km away up a very steep hill at Blackpool. It is scandalous that its just assumed that everybody lives in a 3 bed semi (and thus has space for large water storage containers of course), drives a car, uses the internet and knows where to find information. Oh and lets not forget that in high density city locations many tenants in particular can be living on the 4th floor with only a staircase. Likewise a small number of heating systems may require a water supply.
NOTHING was done to address these issues, even as they became apparent.
3. One thing I learned from this week was how much water is actually needed. On the basis of a need to flush a toilet twice a day per person and 2 litres of drinking water a household requires a minimum of 12 litres person per day. Realistically, I found it difficult to transport volumes above this, even with a car. Getting it from the car to the 1st floor (no lift) was problematic. This meant that a household of 3 adults would effectively need at least 30 litres per day in aggregate. Thats a lot of water. The lack of suitable containers probably meant that many households had to make far more trips than were necessary to distribution points, increasing traffic and making demand less predictable.
On the other hand, providing portaloos in high density areas would have reduced the overall water requirements in these areas, lowered the risk of blocked plumbing and damage to systems.
4. I know where I live there are a lot of eastern Europeans with poor English who had real difficulty in understand what was going on. Also because a large area was impacted, families in particular, who would normally help each other out, were unable to help each other. This left "outsiders" not from the area very much on the end of the helpline where community help was concerned.
5. There was a good deal of misinformation on the radio, especially in the early days.

Local businesses DID exploit the situation or fail to help. There were reports early on of businesses overcharging for water.

Finally, SHAME on Mahon Point last night for closing off their toilets at 11pm with a "closed for cleaning sign" on them and several chairs blocking the area off. They knew many people would probably "use the facilities" because they wanted to conserve limited supplies at home and from what I can see deliberately prevented this. Knowing the situation, this behaviour was absolutely shameful. I would understand if there was no supply there, but this was simply apalling considering the price gouging that Omniplex indulges in compared to the other Cork cinema chains.

As for flooding itself, its difficult to avoid freak weather situations like this. In the case of New Orleans it did transpire that levies had failed far beneath their expected threshold of failures. I doubt that was the case for Cork and other places, but wait and see.

TJJP

http://www.leecframs.ie/reservoirs.asp

nesf

Moving the pumping system up behind the the dam and running a pipe from there to the city water network is the only long term solution. The problem is that this would be very expensive and it would take the best part of a decade to implement.

A back-up pumping station doesn't really work that well, a pumping station needs to sit on top of a vast tank of clean water that's been processed. If this water isn't being pumped it will become stagnant and will become unusable eventually. It's possible to do but it would be complex and costly.