Dublin Water Supply

Following on from my description of Dublin as if it were Hoth from last week, I write this post today with a calm Spring-like air over Dublin. It’s a bit chilly, but not cold or freezing by any standards. The snow has gone and the roads are back to operational standards.

However, since the snow went some truly disgraceful acts of mis-planning occurred in this city. No doubt plenty of Irish bloggers have given their story, but this is mine.

To be clear, let’s just keep in mind the disaster that occurred on the roads when Dublin city was held to ransom over a mere 3 inches of snow. Not enough grit or salt supplies were in place to cope, meaning cars were unable to drive, people unable to get to work and bus services were curtailed. The snow and cold snap itself was not the problem – it was the city planner’s lack of ability to cope with such weather and serve their city. Considering the cold snap set in in December with no rise in temperatures expected, the fact that they were caught unaware is mind boggling.

So, the cold snap subsides and the temperatures return to a positively balmy, by comparison, 8 degrees. The snow goes away and the ice melts. In fact, it started to rain. Back to the usual stuff, so! Except that’s not precisely what happened on the ground. The thaw had a massively negative effect on Dublin (and Ireland generally) and the completely inept and out-of-date water pipes network. A huge amount of pipes burst, leaving a huge sway of the population without any water, or with limited supplies.

But wait, some people in new estates still suffered with this. Surely their pipes are new? Yes, they are. But building regulations were not strictly followed, and the pipes were not left deep enough in the ground – thus causing them to suffer with the cold weather, burst and leave residents without water. Keep in mind in the last 10 years Dublin city has received huge tax payments from developments because of a regime that demands development taxes. Remember that next time they start asking for you to pay water taxes.

Picture by @nathaliemc taken today

What did this mean? Well, in my house our water went around Tuesday/Wednesday. We had low pressure which meant no shower or toilets would work and the only tap that was operational was the cold tap in the kitchen. So each time you go to the toilet you have to fill a bucket with which to fill the cistern and then flush. This is the year 2010, and I live in a major capital city with huge EU funding for infrastructure and development. This country is listed as the 9th richest in the world as per GDP… yet here I was, filling a cistern with tap water that was on such low pressure that it took an age to fill a small bucket.

I shower daily, sometimes twice. Call it OCD, but I enjoy being clean. I feel dirty coming out of the city center with all the fumes, and tailing cars on my bike is a real pain in the face for me. Luckily my accommodating girlfriend who lives 5 minutes away had a fully operational shower. In her house I hear a story from a local councillor who had to move into his mothers house because his water supply had dwindled and he has a small newborn child to look after. The house he was in had no water since the previous Sunday. None, not a drop. They were relying on water tankers that parked near critical areas to allow people to fill buckets etc. The tankers were not always there as stated on the DCC website. The councillor was confident when he said the area would remain without water for another 5 days. Why? Because our water is supplied by Fingal county council. Yes, another council. We live in Dublin city council area. DCC collect our bins, tax us and send us stupid mail in the post about local issues. Yet our water comes from elsewhere. Fingal were not supplying us with water until their locality was sorted first, according to my local councillor.

On Thursday morning I got up, ate some breakfast and went to clean out my cereal bowl. No water. Not a drop. We were suddenly cut off. We resorted to using a giant canister of distilled water usually reserved for the car. But today it was used to fill cisterns in toilets. We then bought 20x2ltr bottles of water to stock up for cooking, cleaning and as a last resort, drinking.

I informed my father of what the local councillor said, and he was was quick to ring Fingal and ask for a timeline for a fix. DCC at this point had issued no information other then where tankers were. No, nothing about overnight crews solving issues. Nothing about when this will be resolved. No timeline in my mind means there’s no plan. Not even an emergency plan. Just like the roads, DCC were completely caught off guard, and completely shambolic in their response, planning and information release to the public. Whoever was manning the phones for DCC had no information, and that was only when they bothered to answer them. The best information I got was from someone on twitter who was very nice. And no, that’s not the official twitter account. Whoever was manning the phones in Fingal, however, were very useful and informative. No timelines of course, so they had as much planning in place as DCC, but they were able to say that the councillor was talking through his arse and covering his own back. Yes, Fingal handle water supplies but there’s no “line” to cross with who supplies water to who. It’s all shared. There’s a huge sway of pipes that were the issue, from Fingal down through North Dublin and then into the Southside. She listed areas affected and was able to tell us where the tankers where and why they may not be where they were suggested to be. In fact, the tanker near us wasn’t where the DCC website said it would be, which is why no one could find it.

Said councillor was emailed by me regarding some information I discovered. In 2006 DCC identified old (100 years or more) water mains under the city, and decided to set aside a budget to fix them. In February 2009 consultation finished, and the next step was identified – fix/replace those pipes. This would have solved every single issue in the city last week. However, nothing has happened since this plan went into place. I asked why, and the response was as follows:

Kevin

Many thanks for your email. If you had the name of the document in question It would help me to track it down. I understand that the current problem with water supply is mainly to do with the available water in the reservoirs. Your area is feed from the Fingal system and they have restricted pressure to such a level as to cut off water altogether. I am not a member of the Environmental and Engineering Strategic Policy Committee on the Council, which is chaired by Cllr. Naoise O’ Muirí (F.G.). To help solve your query, I am not sure where you are currently living but your local councillor is also a good port of call. If I am in fact your local Councillor, I would be happy to follow it up with Naoise on your behalf.

To me, this reads as follows: No idea what you’re talking about (it is the only such document on this situation), the system is flawed because of another council (lies), I’m not a member of some committee so I can’t help (why can’t you have some initiative?) & I can’t help unless I am your local councillor (I emailed you because you are my local councillor you twat, and why does that matter anyway?).

On Friday the water returned. My room is in the attic, and I was awoken by the pipes in the house filling the tank upstairs. Thank god. Showers and flushes for everyone. So far it’s remained on with no interruption. To be selfish about it, this was bad enough, but to happen in a week when I’m doing final year exams is a pile of stress I did not need. To be lied to by a city councillor is another disgrace.

So, listening to radio debates and online chat it seems politicians are now pushing for us to pay water taxes, and the blame is being put on people for leaving taps on. You see, country areas had a freeze in December leaving them without water. That’s bad enough, so some insurance companies (FDB being one) told customers to leave taps running to avoid this issue. I know no one who did this. I also never knew this was a message given to the people until after the fact. So I would love some metrics on where this came from and how badly this affected water supplies. I do have metrics on how much is lost through DCC’s incompetence…

Guinness supplied trucks to give Dubliners water.

In 1996 Dublin was losing about 40% of all water in the pipes. That’s a staggering amount. That’s only 60% of all treated water making it to homes and businesses. In 1996. How the hell did they keep going without fixing this issue? It is believed this figure has not dwindled too much since then.

Lets refresh: 3 inches of snow brought the capital city of the 9th richest country in the world, one that received huge investment from Europe for infrastructure over a lengthy period to its knees forcing people to stay at home because roads were not treated properly, and now leaving thousands upon thousands without water to do basic things like clean and drink.

This city is an absolute disgrace. The fact that no one has come forward to be held accountable is even more disgraceful, and when they dump money into some shit festival over the summer, people will forget how badly they were treated and how that money could have been spent on not having 3 inches of snow ruin an entire metro population of 1.6 million. As I said on facebook, fuck you Dublin. And as I said on twitter, the only thing I want to pump into this economy now is the tax paid on a one-way ticket out of here when I graduate.

As an aside, I was going to name the councillor, but he has no replied to my reply in days. I will give him to Monday to respond before he gets published by name.