Water wastage pollution / quality e-coli cryptosporidium

Auditor #9 wrote:

clareman51 wrote:

What I would like is to have total independence from energy and water charges. There will be a breakthrough some day and I intend to take full advantage.

We need a Clare Anarchist party - Anarchists have corporate cred you know, they're not all gun-mad aggressors like me

cactus flower wrote:

I guess you would have to completely disconnected from the public systems. However you would still be generating a cost on the local authority as presumably you rely on many other people and facilities in the area who need water supplies and who may not be in the position to become independent. At the end of the day unless we want to live up the mountains in a totally independent small holding and never use a school or a hospital we need a clean and reliable public supply.

Very interesting points - the multiplication in the community and the possible inability of people to produce their own water... Have you been to Shannon lately? Roofs and roofs and roofs going to waste waste waste and that man got 300,000 litres from one roof over a short period... What he needs is cheap technology to catch that water, clean it, keep it and then with the caught water cater for the needs of those who are associated with his business. He can even take his tech to the school where his children are at risk from the crypto because of certain ineptitude and he can offer them this tech for a cheap price and they may avoid charges as well as ingestion of potential death-dealing crypto etc. The man could start a second business and get richer.

cactus flower wrote:

The Council are delivering water that is not potable and charging for it. Is there not the potential for the Chamber of Commerce or other group to get a rebate for the costs of buying in potable water? They would soon decide they could afford to rectify their supplies.

They are knowlingly pumping shit into drinking water, shouldn't they be liable for negligence?

I think they are morally responsible for it. In law, I think a case was taken years back about pot holes, and the Courts concluded that doing nothing, on the part of local authorities, did not make them liable. If they had done a bad job of filling them in, and this had caused an accident, they would have been liable. This was a license to do nothing, which is what a lot of local authority engineers have been doing ever since.

soubresauts wrote:

Some years ago I thought that rainwater collection systems would be the business to get into in Ireland. I still think so, but I'm not in Ireland anymore (since I learned the truth about fluoridation).

The Rock of Gibraltar is shaped so as to collect rain water which runs down the steep eastern side. In a time of need people do these things.

Resources and nature are against us in the struggle to provide fresh water for ourselves even here. It's logical that we will start to mine the skies fairly soon enough. I picture them already - "rain fields" off the West Coast - enormous silky sails held up balloons and zepplins, down which the rainwater runs into water ships, getting purified as it trickles down - the sails doubling as weather control when there is too much moisture in the air for our land fields. Your grandchildren will take photographs of them from Loop Head, Black Head, from the cliffs of Moher with the sun going down behind. They'll be bigger than some clouds and semi-transparent. Arabs will visit this country to see them floating out over the Atlantic drying in the summer evenings after they've done their watery job and that sky a fascinating pattern of spent clouds in the distance behind them, lit by the alien sun.

They'll probably come up with lots less impressive ways of catching the water though

We have water, wind and wave ! we are rich beyond the dreams of avarice !!!

cactus flower wrote:

We have water, wind and wave ! we are rich beyond the dreams of avarice !!!

Let's have a song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCjpDqceQYA

Here's something else to worry about: Apparently Dublin City Council have engaged Veolia and RPS to do the awkward work... See here.

Can't you see where it's heading? Private companies making huge profits from all stages of what is supposed to be the public water supply... And the people will still be getting poisoned water.

soubresauts wrote:

Here's something else to worry about: Apparently Dublin City Council have engaged Veolia and RPS to do the awkward work... See here.

Can't you see where it's heading? Private companies making huge profits from all stages of what is supposed to be the public water supply... And the people will still be getting poisoned water.

Yes its privatisation by stealth, like the M50 poll - 20 million a year going to private firms to adminster a public asset.

soubresauts wrote:

Here's something else to worry about: Apparently Dublin City Council have engaged Veolia and RPS to do the awkward work... See here.

Can't you see where it's heading? Private companies making huge profits from all stages of what is supposed to be the public water supply... And the people will still be getting poisoned water.

And no jobs to earn to pay those bills.

Already we know that half a billion euros worth of development have not gone ahead in Clare because of lack of water and sewage infrastructure;
The Beacon Maternity hospital in Sandyford could not start because there wasn't an adequate water supply
And now Galway might have lost out €2.2 billion in investment because of the same lack of infrastructure

Quote :

Galway’s water crisis may have cost Galway a €2.2billion jobs investment and up to 4,000 posts – but nobody in the IDa or other state agencies is prepared to admit it.

Indeed claims that 4,000 pharmaceutical jobs were lost to Galway because of a water shortage is being vigorously refuted by the IDA and other public bodies who claimitwas never on the cards in the first place.

But the makers of an RTE documentary about the national water crisis not only stand over the claim but say one of their sources is within the IDA.

The programme, ‘Future Shock – the Last Drop’ was broadcast on RTE 1 on Tuesday night and its presenter, Philip Boucher Hayes, claimed towards the end of the 75 minute documentary, that the US pharmaceutical company, Johnson&Johnson, looked at basing one of their divisions at a specially built pharma park at Carrowmeanish, Oranmore.

But he claimed that they changed their minds when Galway County Council couldn’t guarantee an adequate water supply.

Yesterday, however, the County Council refuted this saying the US company had never made contact or had any discussions with them about water or otherwise.

The IDA also...

http://www.galwaynews.ie/4860-ida-denies-crisis-cost-4000-jobs

Auditor #9 wrote:

Otherwise it mightn't be a bad thing to introduce a charge for excess use but again the revenue would need to be ploughed back into the system.

Water charges will happen. It's not a case of if but when. You've hit on a couple of good points there. A fair way may be to allocate a quota to a household (although the problem of occupancy within a household would need to be overcome somehow) and charge for usage over and above that. Bottom line is we've spent hugely in the last 10 years and we've made some progress but we're still along way short of the mark.

At lot done, more to do. Who was the fella that said that again....?

DaveM wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Otherwise it mightn't be a bad thing to introduce a charge for excess use but again the revenue would need to be ploughed back into the system.

Water charges will happen. It's not a case of if but when. You've hit on a couple of good points there. A fair way may be to allocate a quota to a household (although the problem of occupancy within a household would need to be overcome somehow) and charge for usage over and above that. Bottom line is we've spent hugely in the last 10 years and we've made some progress but we're still along way short of the mark.

At lot done, more to do. Who was the fella that said that again....?

Yes its true a lot has been done. I'm inclined to remind people that a lot of houses were needed and that viewed from that side, the amount we have built is an achievement. On the other side, I'd be more aware of the extent to which capacity in old systems has been used up, and not yet extended.
We've also had the embarrassment of expensive upgrades that were overcapacity before they were commissioned: presumably working on old population figures or lousy projections. There must be a lot of work out there now at tender stage - the question is will the money be found for it.

Yeah, things are pretty busy on the tendering front of late. No sign of any major cutbacks but the final approval of tenders has been a little slow of late.

On the plants starting up that were overcapacity, the fact that it can take 10 years from inception before a project reaches the commissioning stage is the problem there. Factor in the fact that the last 10 years saw unprecedented development and the problem gets even worse.

DaveM wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Otherwise it mightn't be a bad thing to introduce a charge for excess use but again the revenue would need to be ploughed back into the system.

Water charges will happen. It's not a case of if but when. You've hit on a couple of good points there. A fair way may be to allocate a quota to a household (although the problem of occupancy within a household would need to be overcome somehow) and charge for usage over and above that. Bottom line is we've spent hugely in the last 10 years and we've made some progress but we're still along way short of the mark.

At lot done, more to do. Who was the fella that said that again....?

I think the fan will get splashed with it if water charges are introduced - people will be told by Joe Higgins that they have already paid for it or been paying for it since Dick Spring jacked up VAT to cover it and he'll be dead right. Maybe people will take it if the money is accountable otherwise I think there will be half a war.

Things need to change big style. We aren't wrong when we say that there is enough water falling from the sky so I think there could be huge indignation unless there is some sort of acceptable and fair policy introduced. I hadn't thought of the case where there are a number of people in a house but does it really matter how many there are? A house is allowed a certain amount or a person is allowed a certain amount..? Could it be a voucher system or a tax rebate thing where your house gets a bill for the basic charges but you get discounted if you have a voucher or something or using pps numbers? The more that live in the house the less you pay. If it's less than the tokens or vouchers then you pay nothing.

I don't think Mrs. Wells in the mansion up the road would like to be bringing vouchers into the post office when she's paying her bill though, provided there is room for her jag outside the door of it in the first place.

DaveM wrote:

Yeah, things are pretty busy on the tendering front of late. No sign of any major cutbacks but the final approval of tenders has been a little slow of late.

On the plants starting up that were overcapacity, the fact that it can take 10 years from inception before a project reaches the commissioning stage is the problem there. Factor in the fact that the last 10 years saw unprecedented development and the problem gets even worse.

The other thing that has shot things to pieces on the treatment side is the increased amount of eating and drinking out - pubs and restaurant trade count for a lot. A lot of population projections done in the early 1990s assumed continued emigration - but we really need to be able to react to change a bit quicker than we have in the past. Anyway I suppose water conservation is out next big thing. I agree with Audi - we should all get enough for our monthly bath and 100 daily cups of tea, and after that, pay for it.

How much of this projected water shortage has to do with projections that we'd continue developing at the rate we did during the boom?? Because those projections might be looking a little off target right now. What is likely to happen with Dublin's water supply. Boucher-Hayes dismissed desalination, but if you powered it with offshore wind turbines and had the water pumped to a storage location such that the system only purified and stored water when the wind blew?? Veolia are the lads behind the Luas..not too shabby?? I can see the whole Shannon thing getting nasty, unless you pumped to some Wicklow/Meath reservoir only when the Shannon was in flood??

Edo wrote:

When trying to see a solution to all this - one would despair and starting looking at prospectuses for emigrating to Canada.

Waterton, Ontario. Google it. People died. They have vast water problems in Canada, especially near industrial pigfarms. The water from the Rockies is also full of all sorts of interesting chemicals... the -30 winters precipitate all sorts of dodgy chemicals out of the atmosphere, onto the glaciers and snow cover, then they get into the water supply. I'd say a lot of the rules and regs are not up to EU standards. Lived there for over 3 years though, and it's a great place in many ways.

expat girl wrote:

How much of this projected water shortage has to do with projections that we'd continue developing at the rate we did during the boom?? Because those projections might be looking a little off target right now. What is likely to happen with Dublin's water supply. Boucher-Hayes dismissed desalination, but if you powered it with offshore wind turbines and had the water pumped to a storage location such that the system only purified and stored water when the wind blew?? Veolia are the lads behind the Luas..not too shabby?? I can see the whole Shannon thing getting nasty, unless you pumped to some Wicklow/Meath reservoir only when the Shannon was in flood??

Projections have a habit of being wrong. They are generally done using quite powerful programmes but are only as good as the assumptions and guesses that you make when you set it up. For water use, you would have to take into consideration the amount likely to be used per capita -that could be reduced a lot with grey water systems, leakage reduction, water charging and so on. Then you would be looking at supply - and we just don't know what the weather is going to be like. Have they considered the heavy summer rainfall as a possible pattern? If this continued, there would be scope for a lot of water to be collected in the summer months and held in tanks. Isn't our population projected to double by 2040 or thereabouts? That in itself is an issue, and a big uncertainty.

I missed the RTE water programme, and would be really interested to know what the assumptions were.

cactus flower wrote:

I missed the RTE water programme, and would be really interested to know what the assumptions were.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/futureshock/

Try this above. I'm playing it in Realplayer and this is the address of the file but there's no sound. Could be linux thing but try the above anyway.
rtsp://streaming4.rte.ie/geoblock/31e0d28115d1227a1593e1758895380c/geoblock/2008/futureshockthelastdrop-193812-243.rm

From the media - ECJ ruling on our management of our own waste water

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=160&t=40902

Auditor #9 wrote:

From the media - ECJ ruling on our management of our own waste water

[url=http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=160&t=40902

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=160&t=40902[/quote[/url]]

I hope they are getting their act together. I would have thought Gormley would have been on top of this one, but maybe his masters in Finance haven't given him the funds...or maybe letting the ECJ kick ass is the way Gormo plans to get the funds.... gimme money now or they'll fine us and you won't save a bean??? A pre Budget angle, perhaps??

expat girl wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

From the media - ECJ ruling on our management of our own waste water

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=160&t=40902

I hope they are getting their act together. I would have thought Gormley would have been on top of this one, but maybe his masters in Finance haven't given him the funds...or maybe letting the ECJ kick ass is the way Gormo plans to get the funds.... gimme money now or they'll fine us and you won't save a bean??? A pre Budget angle, perhaps??

What would it take to introduce water rates? There's no way that they could be introduced by budget time is there?

I think that it's not a bad thing at all that the EU pokes us at this level - I'm convinced that the money was there to spend on these items all along but it was of course misspent. Does the Taoiseach have to have a state Merc? among the hordes of form-fillers who were employed and who did little more than bother the people actually working.

I think the a priori assumption that charges would reduce consumption and improve matters probably stems from an un-empirical myth started by Hardin* about the 'tragedy' of the commons which has been pushed by market fanatics over the last three decades.

In the UK they have seen an increase in water wastage and a lack of infrastructural development since the introduction of charges and the inevitable corporate ownership of the supply of water. The top few water corporations are frequently at the top of the list of the most polluting companies in the UK according to the British environmental regulator. This is unsurprising given the profit dynamic and the fact that pollution reduction is in fact a public good which will be insufficiently supplied in a market.

A series of BBC Panorama programmes have highlighted this wastage, along with the ongoing increase in charges.

Also, water demand is inelastic so that the cut in usage from such charges is minimal. Getting any viable response is just not palatable within a civilized and democratic society.
As far as I'm aware the increase in wastage due to the corporate incentive to not improve and maintain infrastructure has increased water wastage and leakage wherever it has been introduced (this is similar to the situation in other utilities such as electricity maintenance and blackouts etc). Or has been 'pending' to be introduced.......the hold back on public investment is a precursor to this future here.


* with regard to Hardin, an excellent article on the myth

The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/angus250808.html

Quote :

"Garrett Hardin hatches a myth

The author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" was Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who until then was best known as the author of a biology textbook that argued for "control of breeding" of "genetically defective" people (Hardin 1966: 707). In his 1968 essay he argued that communities that share resources inevitably pave the way for their own destruction; instead of wealth for all, there is wealth for none.

He based his argument on a story about the commons in rural England.

(The term "commons" was used in England to refer to the shared pastures, fields, forests, irrigation systems, and other resources that were found in many rural areas until well into the 1800s. Similar communal farming arrangements existed in most of Europe, and they still exist today in various forms around the world, particularly in indigenous communities.)

"Picture a pasture open to all," Hardin wrote. A herdsmen who wants to expand his personal herd will calculate that the cost of additional grazing (reduced food for all animals, rapid soil depletion) will be divided among all, but he alone will get the benefit of having more cattle to sell.

Inevitably, "the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd." But every "rational herdsman" will do the same thing, so the commons is soon overstocked and overgrazed to the point where it supports no animals at all.

Hardin used the word "tragedy" as Aristotle did, to refer to a dramatic outcome that is the inevitable but unplanned result of a character's actions. He called the destruction of the commons through overuse a tragedy not because it is sad, but because it is the inevitable result of shared use of the pasture. "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Where's the Evidence?

Given the subsequent influence of Hardin's essay, it's shocking to realize that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping conclusions. He claimed that the "tragedy" was inevitable -- but he didn't show that it had happened even once.

Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real commons: self-regulation by the communities involved......"

[....]

Quote :

The only significant cases of overstocking found by the leading modern expert on the English commons involved wealthy landowners who deliberately put too many animals onto the pasture in order to weaken their much poorer neighbors' position in disputes over the enclosure (privatization) of common lands (Neeson 1993: 156).

Hardin assumed that peasant farmers are unable to change their behavior in the face of certain disaster. But in the real world, small farmers, fishers, and others have created their own institutions and rules for preserving resources and ensuring that the commons community survived through good years and bad.

An example of the "small farmer's "response is the West Cork "friendship trap" - a little door in a lobster pot that allows small lobsters to escape.

Lough Swill


Lovely Lough Shitty


Lough Sewage

Lovely Donegal on a fine day. Imagine the views from one of those heads above this Irish fjiord - Inishowen or Fanad in the background, one of those little dots of houses could be one of Daniel's or Dana's summer homes above the beautiful golden desserted beach, lapped by frothy brown water or worse ...

Quote :

In common with the rest of the country in recent years, the Swilly has also witnessed a runaway construction boom, with myriad new-builds and clusters of holiday homes mushrooming around its shores. One of the many side-effects of wealth seems to be a powerful desire for a sea view, and the sheltered Swilly now provides maritime vistas for many homes along its length.

However, as occupants contemplate Lough Swilly’s moods from their picture windows - its name means the Lake of Shadows - few will ponder whether the water is as wholesome as it looks. Practically none will conjure the revolting image of their own bodily waste swilling around among all that natural beauty.

Remember we are in breach of EU waste water directives as ruled by the ECJ last month - how the hell did we let it get so out of hand?

Quote :

Such concepts do not compute in the Ireland of chilled chardonnay, luxury health spas and New York shopping trips. For, surely, the second-richest OECD nation doesn’t pump raw excrement into the sea?

Yet last month, the European Court of Justice ruled against Ireland for regularly doing precisely that in no fewer than six locations. Letterkenny was one of them. The others were Howth and Shanganagh (Killiney) in Co Dublin, Bray in Co Wicklow, Tramore in Co Waterford and Sligo town.

‘Urban waste water’ is a polite term for sewage, but it also covers ‘grey’ water from baths, showers, washing machines and dishwashers, as well as other unsavoury fluids that the typical householder flushes away with maximum speed and minimum thought.

Maybe Lough Swilly should be renamed Shit Creek?

Quote :

In one of his first acts as environment minister, Green Party leader John Gormley flew to Brussels to head off impending trouble on a number of so-called ‘legacy issues’ - so called because previous administrations had not bothered to deal with them. As Gormley says on his own website: ‘‘It’s serious. We could well be facing fines for years of neglect of EU directives. I have to turn this around in a very short space of time.”

On the subject of urban waste water, Gormley had to tell EU officials that, according to Ireland’s own figures,11 per cent receives no treatment, between 18 and 30 per cent does not receive secondary treatment, and nearly 90 per cent does not receive nutrient reduction beyond secondary treatment, sometimes called tertiary treatment - which is best practice when disposing of such unpleasant stuff.

The EU directive on waste water dates from as far back as 1991.The 2004-05 EPA report listed the six above-mentioned agglomerations as not having adequate secondary treatment facilities - which they should have had by the end of 2000. Indeed, the required level of treatment was absent from 30 out of 158 agglomerations - nearly one-fifth of the areas tested. Local authorities, which are responsible for dealing with urban waste water, were found to have tested many sites incorrectly, or not at all.

Last week, the EPA noted in its Environment Ireland 2008 report that, ‘‘the situation in the Swilly estuary appears to have further deteriorated since the previous assessment’’.

The shit is hitting the Fanad

Quote :

Lifford is the administrative capital, although visitors perhaps understandably assume this to be Donegal town. But thanks to its location, Letterkenny is the de facto powerhouse of the county. Until recently, new hotels, shops and car showrooms opened at a dizzying rate, as a growing populace quickly filled its new suburbs and spread into the surrounding countryside.

So Letterkenny had buckets of cash yet, as the European Court bluntly states, its sewage plant ‘‘is not capable of systematically treating all the discharges of the agglomeration’’. Thus, the stinking by-product of growth regularly ends up in the picturesque Swilly.

Again, this a familiar story. In south Dublin, bathers at Seapoint, Blackrock, Monkstown and Dun Laoghaire regularly complain of a brown sludge in the sea that looks and smells like sewage. The county manager and his staff are on the record as blaming algal bloom - too much seaweed - yet local residents report human faeces floating in the water and even complain of falling ill after breathing the sea air.

And this hardly sounds familiar does it?

Quote :

Proper sewage treatment is expensive and requires long-term planning. Historically, testing and enforcement practices have been lax, to say the least.

It’s a familiar story in Ireland with anything that requires both political forethought and substantial sums of public money, such as developing and building roads, transport, schools, hospitals and landfills. The pace of development has often far outstripped infrastructural provision. Most basic failings cannot be masked by the sea; unfortunately, sewage can - at least, up to a point.

Agenda, SBP

End of Rant 1

The Indo reports this morning that bottled water sold and drunk in Ireland has been found to contain e-coli bacteria. E-coli - the thing that lives in the bowels of warm-blooded creatures, cows, humans, dogs, pigs, cats, now also occupying your bottle of -------- . Irish bottled waters were found to have more e-coli than imported waters ..


http://lakehuron.ca/index.php?page=e-coli
E. coli, or more precisely Escherichia coli, is a subgroup of fecal coliform bacteria. It is naturally found in the intestines
of warm-blooded animals, such as cows, chicken, pigs, dogs, cats, birds, and people too. It enter the environment through feces.
There are thousands of different strains of E. coli. Fortunately very few strains are pathogenic. The O157H strain that caused the tragic
loss of life at Walkerton is an example of one pathogenic strain of E. coli. The E. coli present in humans do not cause diseases in people.

Bottled water scare as dangerous germs found - Indo

Quote :

Shocking levels of contamination in bottled waters sold here are exposed in a confidential report by the State's food safety watchdog.

The draft report -- a copy of which has been seen by the Irish Independent -- reveals that harmful bacteria, including E coli, have been found in bottled waters on sale throughout the country.

Environmental health officers found 7.2pc of bottled waters they sampled for the report were in breach of either legal or EU guidelines.

They also found that one-in-every-11 samples of Irish-produced water tested positive for contaminants -- compared to just one in every 119 imported brand samples tested.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/bottled-water-scare-as-dangerous-germs-found-1541957.html

They say that one bottle in every 16 had the gut bacteria - a possible indicator of fecal contamination. Are we going to be told which bottled waters ? In Ennis you now have the choice between crypto in your tapwater or e-coli in your 5 litre bottle of -----------. We'll soon need testing kits to test for shit in the water we're drinking from everywhere.

The Indo Editorial questions what the FSAI - Food Safety Authority of Ireland will do to implement possible EU fines..

Quote :

And the confidential report is intriguing for what it does not reveal as well as what it does. It says that environmental health officers have taken "follow-up" action. It says that the FSAI has met representatives of the industry to discuss long-term control measures. But a more pertinent question is what this State safety watchdog will do about existing failings.

Breaches of European Union regulations are offences punishable by severe penalties, including prison sentences. At the time the regulations came into force, did the FSAI alert the producers?

Were the producers satisfied on the issue of quality control? One would have thought they would always take the greatest care, with or without legal requirements. They sell their products on the basis that they come from pure springs, free of all contamination.

Now that the FSAI document has come into the open, they run the risk that consumers may shun their products. This is a serious matter for economic and other reasons.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/water-scandal-all-too-familiar-1542033.html

Anyone else hear the Ringsend saga yesterday? Why was a sewage treatment plant that was meant to have capacity for 20 years run out of capacity the year it was opened?