Northside water maintenance works may cause discolouration

Uisce Éirean has warned that its latest round of flushing works of Cork city water mains may cause temporary discolouration of water supplies in some parts of the northside.

The water utility company, which rebranded from Irish Water at the start of the year, said it and Cork City Council will begin a ten-day programme of flushing works on Monday which will affect residents on Redemption Road, Commons Road, Mary Aikenhead Place, Farranree and the surrounding areas.

The company said the flushing works would clear watermains of sediment and would reduce discolouration of the water supply.

This is the third such round of flushing works to be carried out by Uisce Éireann in recent months, and it follows flushing works in the Douglas Road and South Douglas Road area in February and in the Ballinlough Road, Browningstown Park, Beechwood Park, and Shrewsbury areas in April.

Water discolouration became a serious and recurring problem in many parts of Cork city in the months since summer of last year, when Irish Water opened its new Lee Road water treatment plant.

As previously reported in The Echo, after the new facility opened in July 2022, the water utility company became inundated with complaints as brown and orange discoloured water began to flow from taps in multiple locations across the city.

According to documents released to Socialist Party TD Mick Barry after a Freedom of Information request, the number of complaints about water quality in Cork city last year rose from 20 per week in the Lee Road plant’s first week of operation to 119 complaints in one week last August.

In the four months after the plant opened, the company received 610 complaints of discoloured water from residents across the city.

In 2022, Irish Water received 29 reports from people in Cork city complaining of illnesses suspected to have been caused by water consumption, compared to just one such complaint in 2020 and two in 2021.

Last October, after a series of questions from The Echo, Irish Water admitted that it had been responsible for the discolouration of at least some of the city’s drinking supply since last summer.

The company said an adjustment of the chemicals used in water preparation had caused rusty sediment to be stripped from the inside of Cork city’s century-old water mains, resulting in discoloured water pouring out of household taps in homes across the city.

In the correspondence released to Mick Barry TD under FOI was an email, dated 22 August 2022, from Irish Water informing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of an increase in complaints of discoloured water in Cork city.

The mail noted that water from the new Lee Road plant had entered the supply on July 29 2022 and added: “There is the potential that process changes, particularly the change in the pH corrective chemical in use, i.e. from Lime to Caustic, may be contributing to the problem and causing the water to become more corrosive”.

Uisce Éireann has insisted that discoloured water does not pose a health and safety risk, while simultaneously warning people not to drink discoloured water and issuing assurances that water is safe to drink if taps are kept on until the water runs clear.

Speaking about the latest round of flushing works, Pat Britton, operations lead with Uisce Éireann, said the work would allow the company to further investigate and get a better understanding of discolouration issues.

“At the moment discolouration complaint volumes are low,” he said.

“However, when dealing with an old and vast water network like we have in Cork City, there are always going to be a small number of incidences of discolouration.” 

Uisce Éireann said ongoing testing and analysis of the water supply continues, in conjunction with extensive monitoring across the city’s distribution network, ensuring water is compliant with drinking water regulations and is safe to drink.

The results of these ongoing tests are shared with the EPA and the HSE, the company said.

There are approximately 600km of water mains in Cork city, 60% to 70% of which are made from cast iron and up to 100 years old.

Uisce Éireann said this, combined with improvement works across the city, unplanned outages or bursts, and new infrastructure being brought online, is adding to discolouration issues normally associated with an aging network for what it called “a small number of customers”.

The Uisce Éireann customer care helpline is open 24/7 on 1800 278278.