Conserve water - strong appeal to Mayo customers

AS the warm weather continues, the demand on water supplies is outstripping supply in several areas around the country, with increased demand at 10% above normal or more.

Demand for water right across Co. Mayo continues to increase and as a result Irish Water is urging the public to conserve water while the prolonged dry spell that has been predicted by Met Éireann continues.

Irish Water and Mayo County Council are monitoring all supplies across the county on a daily basis and the three most at-risk areas that have been identified are the Lough Mask and Westport public water supplies and the Ballina area, covering Lacken to Knockmore and Bonniconlon to Crossmolina. Customers on these supplies are urged to conserve water wherever possible.

Irish Water and Mayo County Council are monitoring all supplies across the county on a daily basis and there are currently no water restrictions in place. However, the public is urged to conserve water in every way possible to ensure a continuous supply for all.

Irish Water is working with local authorities to do everything possible to conserve water available, examining how we can make further inroads into leakage and seeking maximum public cooperation in saving water. This requires that non-essential uses are stopped while the crisis lasts and the company is drafting Drought Orders to ban such uses for schemes in crisis.

Irish Water will continue to encourage and support the public in their conservation efforts and are grateful for all measures that have been taken in homes and businesses. In the last two days the utility has also been in touch with large commercial users who have committed to conserve water.

Irish Water’s drought management team continues to meet daily and is monitoring water supplies and demand around the country. This work is coordinated daily through three regional teams and the 31 local authorities operating the system.

Local authority crews have been on the ground managing supplies, trying to control pressures and in critical schemes, managing restrictions on night use to try to protect critical day-time use.

Crews are busy identifying and fixing leaks to try to take pressure off the system. Irish Water continue to ask the public to notify them of leaks.

Powers are available to Irish Water to ban specific uses of water (non-essential uses) in the Water Services Acts and will make and publicise a number of orders shortly which will designate activities which must be banned for a period while the supply remains critical.

Ultimately, the objective of water saving and responsible water use must rely primarily on public cooperation. However, these drought orders will provide certain powers of enforcement to be used where necessary in support of the urgent need to preserve valuable and increasingly scarce water resources to meet essential social and economic needs.

In many schemes, Irish Water’s primary concern is for longer term supplies in late summer and autumn.