Irish Water is working closely with Donegal County Council to address damage to water and wastewater infrastructure caused by the extreme rainfall of recent days. Over 70mm of rain fell in a 9 hour period on Tuesday night, equating to 63% of August’s average total rainfall. As a result of this, significant damage was caused to roads and bridge infrastructure which had a direct impact on any associated water and wastewater pipework as well as flooding of some wastewater treatment plants.
In responding to this extreme weather event, Irish Water acknowledges the huge effort of Donegal County Council staff in addressing the water services outages, while at the same time dealing with the broader issues of property flooding, roads and bridgeworks failures and other damage to services in the county.
To date there have been approximately 17 significant water network incidents that involved pipes being affected as a result of flood damage to roads, bridges and waterways and 6 wastewater treatment plants affected by flooding.
Irish Water and Donegal County Council staff have been reacting to these incidents as they have arisen over the past three days and have carried out temporary repairs in order to restore and maintain water supply to customers.
The water main delivering water to Carndonagh which in turn serves the area of Carndonagh and North Inishowen, including Malin, Malin Head and surrounding areas had bursts in numerous locations leading to disruptions for customers in these areas. These have now been repaired on a temporary basis and water supply should be restored to all customers in the coming hours. Irish Water will continue to liaise with Donegal County Council on permanent replacement in conjunction with road and bridge works reinstatement.
Supply has also been restored to other locations affected by supply outages including areas around Muff and Quigley’s Point.
While a number of wastewater plants throughout the county did experience flooding, all the plants currently remain operational and continue to provide primary treatment of wastewater. Irish Water is liaising with the EPA on the status of plants and with the County Council staff to ensure the situation is managed effectively.
Laurence Nash, Irish Water’s Operations Lead for Donegal, said: “An incident team has been set up which will continue to monitor the situation over the coming days. Irish Water is working closely with Donegal County Council to ensure that resources are available at the weekend to deal with any incidents as they arise.
“A number of temporary repairs have been carried out to date and we will continue to do whatever is needed to maintain normal services for our customers in Donegal. Once the full extent of the damage has been assessed, we will be carrying out any permanent repairs that are required.”
The Service and Supply section of the Irish Water website will be updated regularly with details of any incidents and updates have also been broadcast on local radio. Customers are advised to contact the 24/7 customer care line at 1850 278 278 to report any incidents in their area.
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