‘Our primary concern is for longer term supplies in late summer and autumn.’
In the last few days, several parts of the country have been left with limited access to water due to the drought-like conditions brought on by the current heatwave.
While the ‘hosepipe ban’ is currently only in place in the Greater Dublin Area, it is expected to be widened to include Laois, Kilkenny, Limerick, Kerry, Galway and Waterford before the end of the week.
Toni Bourke, the Regional Communications Lead for Irish Water, told JOE that:
“Irish Water’s primary concern is for longer term supplies in late summer and autumn. Based on modelling in previous dry years, and allowing for how dry the ground now is, we need to maximise conservation of raw water at this time to secure our needs over the coming months.
“Therefore, these urgent conservation messages are of critical importance to communities in Dublin and the other marginal supply areas across the country.”
Meanwhile, Irish Water managing director Jerry Grant told Newstalk the following:
“My expectation now is that this is likely to go on right into September. Because the kind of drought that we are seeing at the moment shows a serious deficit in ground water levels.”
“Unless we get torrential rainfalls in August – which we sometimes do – we will see a very slow recovery, especially in groundwater sources where recharge takes a lot of time.”
These photos show the water reservoir level in Bohernabreena reservoir in March and how the water reserves have depleted significantly by July 1st. A reduction of 1.8 meters. To learn easy ways to #Conservewater visit https://t.co/5ToiqQcQYq #IrishWater pic.twitter.com/NRMNwku3kK
— Uisce Éireann – Irish Water (@IrishWater) July 3, 2018
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