Fears over drinking water quality in Cork group water schemes
To Private Schemes At Of Group Required Risk As Many Failing Health Could Standards Picture Them Are By Quality Stock Supplied People’s Water Put Meet
Drinking water supplied by private group schemes in Co Cork could potentially be putting people’s health at risk because many of these schemes are failing to meet required quality standards.
Louis Duffy, the senior official in charge of Cork County Council’s environment directorate, has urged businesses served by private water supplies to alert the local authority so it can carry out additional water quality tests.
Mr Duffy said there are “issues with the quality” of a number of larger private group schemes and smaller wells which provide drinking water to individual households and/or a few neighbouring properties.
There are around 300 such schemes in the county but Mr Duffy said there are probably more which the council is not aware of and the local authority is anxious to identify them.
That is why he he is urging small businesses to contact the council as they could be attached to these untested supplies.
He revealed that only 70% of the known private group schemes in the county were in quality compliance up to the end of last month, and just 63% of the smaller schemes.
Mr Duffy said consumers may not be aware that they could be drinking water from an unmonitored supply, potentially putting their health at risk.
He said compliance levels are dropping mainly due to increased E.coli contamination — normally as a result of faecal matter getting into water from animals — and trihalomethanes (THMs) which are formed when organic material reacts with chlorine disinfection.
In a report delivered to councillors, Mr Duffy said:
He said the council is set to increase farm inspections as it is concerned that slurry runoff from some agricultural properties in some areas is increasingly getting into drinking water supplies.
He told north Cork councillors he had received a few reports that were “generally indicative of very poor performance” of some farmers in the Kanturk/Mallow municipal district who were allowing slurry to run off their farms into rivers and streams.
“We will be increasing farm surveys because of these challenges to our water bodies,” Mr Duffy added.
Independent councillor Patrick O’Donoghue said the closed season for spreading slurry on land should be looked at again. Farmers are not allowed spread slurry between October 1 and mid-January due to higher rainfall in that period and the risk of runoff into watercourses.
Mr O’Donoghue said climate change has led to some months when the ‘open season’ is wetter than the ‘closed season’.
Mr Duffy conceded that is something which may need to be looked at in the years ahead. He said contamination of drinking water supplies is also connected in some cases to deforestation work and leaking or overflowing septic tanks.
Inspections of septic tanks are being specifically targeted in areas where there’s increased risk to some drinking supplies.
There have been just 136 of these inspections up to the end of September this year in the county.
“This is quite a small number for such a large county,” Fianna Fail councillor Frank O’Flynn said.
Mr Duffy said people who suspect they are in the ‘vulnerable’ areas can look at the likelihood of inspections and their eligibility for grant-aid for repairs by using a new portal on the council’s website by logging in their eircode.
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