I thank the committee for inviting the EPA to assist regarding issues affecting water quality, drinking water quality and recent incidents at the Gorey and Ballymore Eustace drinking water treatment plants. I am joined by my colleagues from the EPA, Dr. Michelle Minihan, Mr. Noel Byrne and Ms Mary Gurrie. They are all senior managers dealing with water issues in the EPA.
My opening statement addresses briefly the current status of water quality generally in Ireland and the associated pressures, the current environmental priorities with regard to wastewater treatment, the current challenges in the provision of drinking water services, and more specifically, the recent failures at drinking water treatment plants in Ballymore Eustace and Gorey. All of that summary information is available for members' convenience. In the interests of time I will move to page 7 of the opening statement, from where I believe the committee will be interested to receive an EPA perspective and update on the recent drinking water quality incidents at the Ballymore Eustace and Gorey water treatment plants.
The Ballymore Eustace plant is the largest drinking water treatment plant in the country, serving approximately 877,000 consumers across Kildare, Meath and Dublin city and county and producing up to approximately 320 megalitres of treated drinking water per day. At 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday, 1 September, Irish Water informed the EPA of an alum dosage incident at the plant, which occurred on 20 August, 12 days earlier, but had only come to Irish Water’s attention the previous day. The EPA, accompanied by representatives of the HSE, conducted an audit of the plant on 9 September with the purpose of establishing the facts of the incident, the corrective actions taken following the incident and to verify the performance of the Ballymore Eustace water treatment plant once corrective actions had been taken. The root cause of the incident was a mechanical pump failure that took a number of hours to fix, as well as an issue with the chlorine dosing system. The impacts included the following: the Cryptosporidium treatment barrier was compromised for up to ten hours; there was ineffective disinfection of water when turbidity rose significantly; there was inadequate disinfection of water due to low chlorine levels in the final water for up to six hours; and there was a plug of inadequately treated water in the network for up to four days after the incident.
The Gorey Creagh water treatment plant serves 7,241 consumers in County Wexford. At 6 p.m. on Thursday, 26 August, Irish Water informed the EPA of an incident where inadequately disinfected water went into supply from the Creagh water treatment plant over the period from 19-24 August, seven days after the incident commenced.
The EPA undertook a virtual audit of the Creagh water treatment plant on 7 September and an on-site audit on 16 September to establish the full facts of the incident and the corrective actions taken following it and to verify the performance of the Creagh water treatment plant once corrective actions had been taken.
The root cause was a power failure on the evening of the 19 August which caused the chlorine pump to fail, compromising the disinfection system at the plant. In parallel, over the weekend of 21 August, there was heavy rainfall which resulted in a deterioration of the water quality of the River Bann, which supplies the Creagh plant. The impacts were that the cryptosporidium treatment barrier was compromised for up to five days and that there was inadequate disinfection of water due to there being little or no chlorine in the final water for up to five days The HSE advised during both audits that in late August and September many people in the locality became ill and were confirmed to have infections of VTEC, which is a form of E. coli, campylobacter, cryptosporidium, Giardia, shigella and rotavirus, with a number of people also being hospitalised.
There were common audit findings at both Ballymore Eustace and Gorey. The audits the EPA undertook identified Irish Water’s failings in managerial oversight in delivering on its role to supply safe and secure drinking water from Ballymore Eustace and Gorey. This was evidenced at local authority level through failings in operational control and responsiveness. The common issues identified include: a basic lack of awareness and understanding amongst operational and management staff as to the significance of the incidents and their impact on the drinking water quality and risk to public health; a lack of awareness of the requirement to communicate and escalate such an incident to Irish Water, thereby preventing the opportunity to assess the need for a boil water notice and to protect public health; a lack of critical alarm settings to inform operators of deteriorating water quality; an absence of documented alarm or incident response procedures; and no automatic shutdown of the plant in the event that critical alarms were activated.
The EPA published its audit reports on its website yesterday and made a number of recommendations which Irish Water will need to address to the satisfaction of the agency. Based on the significant findings of these audits, the EPA instructed Irish Water to take a number of immediate actions to ensure that these risks are not prevalent across all drinking water plants and to assess the performance of those plants. These actions include: an audit of all Irish Water plants, starting with the largest top 20 supplies by population, to ensure that staff were appropriately trained in incident awareness, response, reporting and escalation; a review of critical alarm and shutdown settings to ensure public health is protected; and engagement with senior management in local authorities to highlight the failings of recent incidents and measures necessary to prevent these happening again. The EPA is meeting Irish Water weekly to assess progress on actioning the items I have outlined. As part of the EPA audit programme, independent audits are being completed at the larger plants, focusing on incident management and critical alarm provisions.
I will emphasise the main issues highlighted by these incidents. The EPA has described these incidents as an abject failure of managerial oversight, operational control and responsiveness by Irish Water and the local authorities in terms of their respective roles to deliver safe and secure drinking water. While Irish Water has the primary responsibility for the safety of the water supply, the failure to report incidents between the local authorities and Irish Water prevented a timely risk assessment of the incidents and resulted in unacceptable delays in notifying the EPA and the HSE. These unacceptable delays in reporting, and, in particular, the failure to consult with the HSE as to the risk to public health during the incidents meant that there was no opportunity to issue a boil water notice to approximately 900,000 consumers of both supplies, which would have served to protect public health until issues at the plants were resolved satisfactorily.
Additional unreported incidents were uncovered by EPA inspectors during the auditing process, which supports the EPA’s view of incident management by Irish Water and local authorities and their seriousness as a risk to public health. Unfortunately, these incidents are not isolated and have been evident in other audits conducted in other parts of the country. It is clear to the EPA that the current arrangements for the delivery of safe drinking water in terms of managerial oversight, operational control and responsiveness are not working satisfactorily and are placing unacceptable risk on public health by failing to ensure safe and secure drinking water. While the EPA is aware of the ongoing work towards the transformation of Irish Water to a national water services utility by 2023, immediate significant improvement in the provision of water services by Irish Water and local authorities operating under the current service level agreement is required to ensure the public is provided with safe and secure drinking water and that public health is protected.
I assure the committee that the EPA will continue to monitor and report on water quality, to provide regulatory oversight of Irish Water and to work closely with the HSE and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage with the primary objective of ensuring the protection of human health and the environment. I thank members for their attention.
