Cork's water woes: Residents buy bottled water as Uisce Éireann struggles to repair network

And if that wasn’t bad enough, raw sewage flooded Monahan Road and Centre Park Road in January after equipment failure at an Uisce Éireann pumping station at the Atlantic Pond, forcing the closure of both roads for several hours while up to 20 tankers were drafted in to clean up the mess.

Both incidents highlight why the utility has been in the crosshairs of politicians in Cork City in recent months.

There have been issues in the county too, where Uisce Éireann is struggling to deliver timely upgrades to over-stretched wastewater treatment plants, where capacity issues are preventing the delivery of housing in the teeth of a housing crisis, where leaks and discharges from ageing plants have forced the closure of beaches in tourism hotspots, impacting on the tourism sector, and where it has been fined for major fish kills on once-pristine fisheries.

Drinking water treatment began at the Lee Road site in 1879. There had been several upgrades to the facilities over the years, but no major upgrades since the 1950s.

The new water treatment plant came on stream in the summer of 2022, and it is operating as it should, producing an average of 30m litres of clean drinking water a day in full compliance with strict guidelines.

But problems emerged within weeks of its opening, with a spike in complaints about discoloured water flowing from taps.

Tweaks to the water production process at the new plant, as well as pipe replacement works elsewhere, all on the back of the usual breaks, bursts, and repairs, combined to create the perfect storm for consumers, who have been unable to rely on that most basic of services — a reliable supply of clean drinking water.

The problem has been persistent, affecting thousands of homes, preventing the use of domestic showers and washing machines, and disrupting cafes, pubs, hotels, and laundry businesses.

Hundreds of people in affected areas have opted to buy bottled water instead. Calls for vouchers to cover their costs have fallen on deaf ears because Uisce Éireann insists the water is safe to drink once running clear.

The investment in the plant represents a major chunk of the €100m plus that has been invested by Uisce Éireann in water and wastewater infrastructure improvements across Cork City in recent years.

But taxpayers in affected areas have yet to see the benefit of that investment.

The utility has been struggling for almost three years now to ensure that the clean water produced at the plant remains clear and safe to drink by the time it flows from consumers’ taps.

The key problem is that of the 600km of water pipe in Cork City, 300km is ageing Victorian-era cast-iron pipes, which have become lined with sediment.

Water pipes, which remain settled in the ground for decades, are very sensitive to change — either a change to the water treatment process, in ground conditions, or to any kind work on the network itself. And there has been a lot of that happening in Cork City in recent years.

A taskforce set up early last year to address the issue has introduced new treatment steps at the plant, including a step to remove manganese — a naturally occurring mineral that has been found in elevated levels in the River Lee — and to condition the final water being produced.

It has also overseen the flushing of the pipe network in areas with the most discolouration complaints.

But Uisce Éireann says while these will work in the short- to medium-term, the only long-term solution is to replace all the old cast-iron pipes — all 300km.

Pipe replacement work is slow, complicated, disruptive and expensive. City centre residents got a taste of just how disruptive last year when work, much it done at nighttime, was under way on a major water main replacement project on the city’s South Quays, which saw over 4.2km of old cast-iron mains dating back to the 1930s replaced with modern pipes.

The project, completed in February, will provide a more reliable water supply, reduce high levels of leakage, support growth and development, and help address the discolouration issues that some customers in the city have been experiencing, Uisce Éireann said.

However, following a recent media tour of the Lee Road treatment plant, its experts gave a sobering assessment of the scale of the task ahead.

They said the cost of replacing the city’s cast-iron mains would require an investment of at least €500m and would take several decades — a signal of the scale of investment required following decades of underinvestment in the State’s water supply network.

Several county towns have their own water issues. In some places, it means that thousands of people are living under extended boil water notices, or that new homes can’t be built because of the lack of capacity in the wastewater infrastructure.

In others areas, pristine fisheries have been wiped out by spills from ageing sewage treatment plants.

The Whitegate public water supply in East Cork, which serves approximately 10,000 customers in areas including Aghada, Churchtown, Ballycotton, Saleen, Shanagarry, Ballinacurra, and parts of Cloyne, has been under a boil water notice since October 2023, blamed on infrastructural deficiencies and contamination risks.

Last July, work began on a €22m upgrade at the Whitegate water treatment plant, with a new facility being built to replace the old plant, and due for completion in 2026.

The new plant will be able to treat about 6m litres of water per day. The utility says the investment will address the frequent boil water notices that the people of East Cork have experienced over the last number of years.

Elsewhere, a “do not consume” notice — issued when not even boiling the water will make it safe to consume — has been in effect on Whiddy Island since August 2022 due to low water levels at the island’s raw water extraction point and high levels of colour and turbidity in the treated water, and on Dursey Island’s public water supply since August 2024, due to elevated levels of manganese in the water entering the public water supply.

The notice here does not apply to everyone on the island — only to those in receipt of a hand delivered notice and who are on the island’s public water scheme.

Water issues are particularly acute in Dunmanway, a key town in the strategic heart of West Cork. House building has been effectively halted in the town because its wastewater treatment plant is operating at capacity.

The problem is so bad that it has been enshrined as an objective into the latest county development plan that no new developments requiring a connection to the treatment plant will be permitted until the necessary plant upgrades are in place, despite the same plan saying the town needs 126 new homes by 2028 to cope with population growth.

Uisce Éireann says the upgrades are several years away.

The plant has leaked too, with one incident last July involving a discharge into a special area of conservation in the River Bandon, noted for its inland delta and presence of the freshwater pearl mussel.

A local action group says the lack of capacity in its wastewater treatment plant is like a noose around the town’s neck, strangling its potential, and preventing the delivery of new homes in the midst of a housing crisis.

In Rosscarbery, the Warren Beach and nearby Owenahincha Beach have both been forced to close several times during recent peak tourist seasons due to high E coli readings in the water, with many locals blaming leaks from nearby wastewater treatment plants for the problem.

Local action groups in Rosscarbery, Shannonvale, and Goleen have been told they may have to wait until 2030 before they are even considered for funding.

In North Cork, the discharge of a highly corrosive chemical from poorly maintained pipes at a water treatment plant last June killed tens of thousands of fish on the River Allow — a pivotal Munster fishery, and a significant spawning and nursery catchment for salmon and trout.

The discharge from the Freemount water treatment plant undid years of superb environmental work by local landowners and farmers in the catchment to protect and enhance the fishery.

The leak occurred just days before a major international angling competition and forced the cancellation of the event, resulting in a significant economic loss to the area.

In a “constraints to development” report last year, the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) identified constraints in water and wastewater treatment plants as among a number of key factors threatening the delivery of housing on a number of key sites around metropolitan Cork.

The Southern Regional Assembly pointed out that metropolitan Cork achieved only 58.5% of its projected population growth between 2016 and 2022, while, in stark contrast, the non-metropolitan area achieved 80% of its projected growth while the Dublin Metropolitan Area grew by 166% over the same period.

CIF said the latest city development plan envisages the delivery of just over 17,000 new homes up to 2028, while the county development plan envisages just over 10,500 units in the same period — targets likely to be underestimates based on a higher national housing need requirement to 2040 of 50,000 units annually.

CIF said it is clear that Cork requires substantial inward investment, including in water infrastructure, to both reverse these trends and cater for planned population increases.

In Blarney and Tower, where almost 2,000 new homes have been earmarked to accommodate a population increase of just over 6,200 by 2028, the local wastewater treatment plant will only have the capacity to serve a further 500 homes over the next two years or so.

Uisce Éireann has only recently secured planning to increase wastewater treatment capacity in Midleton, where almost 1,300 new homes have planning, with hundreds of new homes set to be delivered in the Water-Rock area alone.

There are other signs of progress, however.

Uisce Éireann completed the Lower Harbour main drainage project, a massive €144m engineering project to end the discharge of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage into Cork Harbour.

In Macroom, it is halfway through the €21m upgrade of the town’s wastewater treatment plant, due to become fully operational in 2026.

The town’s old water treatment plant, where a boil water notice was in effect from last September to early February, and where “operational issues” later that month led to overnight restrictions on supply, is also being upgraded.

A near-€500,000 investment in the Mitchelstown water treatment plant has led to its removal from the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of vulnerable water supplies.

And an €11m wastewater treatment plant has been completed in Castletownshend, eliminating raw sewage discharges into Castlehaven Harbour.

But with continued population growth against a background of intense housing demand, these investments are the minimum of what’s required.