Update on Water Supply Situation 29th January 2010

There has been a significant improvement in relation to the water supply situation throughout the Dublin Region over the last week. This is due to a combination of factors including a reduction in demand from consumers, finding and fixing leaks and the imposition of supply restrictions by the Local Authorities. Storage levels have recovered from the critically low levels of early January at all treated water reservoirs. At Stillorgan Reservoir, which is of vital strategic importance, levels have risen from a low of 402 million litres on January 15th to 640 million litres on January 29th 2010.

Dublin Lord Mayor stated "I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to all of those who played a part in helping to resolve the unprecedented difficulties with water supply that have been experienced over the last 3 weeks. The understanding, co-operation and assistance of all of our customers was seminal in helping us to resolve the problems, together with the Elected Members, the City Council’s own staff from all departments, area offices, Civil Defence and Fire Brigade, our sister Local Authorities, the Department of Defence (Army), and companies like Diageo. The situation could have been much worse and the impact even greater to customers but for the efforts of all involved. We regret any inconvenience caused to the public as a result of pressure reductions, supply restrictions and the work involved in finding and fixing leaks. Further work needs to be done on the network and ongoing conservation measures taken by the public will greatly assist in bringing the water supply back to normal. It is a credit to all involved that the impact of a one in fifty year cold spell on the water distribution system will have been substantially dealt with in a period of four weeks.”

“The City Council has undertaken to conduct a full review of the challenges presented by the recent extreme inclement weather and to use the learning outcomes to help us tackle such events in the future. To this end I intend to have a further discussion on the matter next Monday night at the February Meeting of the City Council under Lord Mayor’s Business”, the Lord Mayor concluded.