Request for legal action to be taken over water supply is refused

Amid concern over difficulties that will be caused for homes and businesses in Clonmel by the changeover to a hard water supply, a request to seek an injunction to prevent Uisce Éireann from decommissioning both the Poulavanogue water treatment plant and the Ragwell Reservoir in the town has been turned down.

The request was made by Cllr Pat English at a meeting of Clonmel Borough District, as a reaction to Uisce Éireann’s plans to replace the public water supplied to homes and businesses from the Poulavanogue plant with hard water from the Monroe plant.

A written reply to Cllr English’s request from District Administrator Marie O’Donnell stated that the council members didn’t have the authority to institute proceedings in the council’s name.

“The taking of legal proceedings under the Local Government Act 2001 is entrusted to the chief executive of a local authority, who is empowered to do so on behalf of a local authority.

“The Clonmel Borough District members are due to meet Uisce Éireann again on October 6. This will provide the members with an opportunity to collectively raise their concerns with Uisce Éireann,” Ms O’Donnell stated.

Cllr English said that Uisce Éireann seemed to be a law unto themselves and were very hard to deal with.

He said it “saddened” him that the Poulavanogue plant would be closed down. The plant had stayed going all the time when there had been several outages in other water treatment plants during the recent dry spell.

“Something needs to be done to try and keep that supply for Clonmel people going forward,” he stated.

He thought it might be possible to mix the water from Poulavanogue with the supply coming from Monroe to dilute the hard water, as had been done in other areas.

Cllr English said that nothing came out of council members’ meetings with Uisce Éireann, which were held behind closed doors. Any suggestions made by councillors were forgotten about.

Cllr Richie Molloy said the people of Clonmel who received their supply from Poulavanogue still didn’t fully realise the implications of the changeover to a hard water supply. There would be a lot of problems for dishwashers, showers and coffee machines, for example, in homes and businesses.

However, Uisce Éireann weren’t informing the public about this and were instead “spinning it a different way” by stating there would be fewer outages.

It was a sad day when Uisce Éireann was formed and the responsibility for the water supply removed from the councils.

Cllr Molloy said their meeting with Uisce Éireann officials on October 6 should be open to the public so that people could hear what’s going on.

Cllr John FitzGerald said that while he welcomed the huge investment in Clonmel, he saw merit in the suggestion to dilute the hard water from Monroe with water from Poulavanogue, and retaining the Poulavanogue plant as a back-up solution.

He said he was looking forward to the meeting with Uisce Éireann but wasn't optimistic.

District Mayor Siobhán Ambrose said she was one of those residents whose supply would be switched to hard water from Monroe, and there would be an additional cost on people when they had to instal water softeners.

The council members had been very vocal about this issue in their meetings with Uisce Éireann.

They were told that there would be a very strong and guaranteed supply to homes and businesses when the changeover happened. The councillors would prefer if the water supplies were mixed but were told this wasn’t an option.

District Administrator Marie O’Donnell had also stated that work on the 15 kilometres water supply pipeline, connecting the Monroe supply to the town to replace the supply from Poulavanogue, was practically complete. This work had been ongoing for some time and involved pipe laying along Thomas Street and Dillon Street, after coming in the Fethard Road.