Issues Arising from The Quality of Drinking Water In Ireland Report

1. Issues Arising from The Quality of Drinking Water In Ireland Report Brendan Wall Senior Inspector Environmental Protection Agency

2. Outline of Presentation • Overview of Regulations • Summary of the Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland • Monitoring Deficiencies • Quality Issues • Corrective Action • Recommendations

3. European Communities (Drinking Water) Regulations, 2000 • Regs set Parametric Values for 2 Microbiological, 26 Chemical and 20 Indicator parameters • Focus in on human health and corrective action to be taken in the event of a non-compliance • Microbiological and Chemical standards must be adhered to. • Indicator standard should be adhered to but corrective action to be taken in the event of failure is related to the health implications of the non-compliance

4. Monitoring • Two monitoring categories: Check and Audit • Check: to check micro and organoleptic quality and effectiveness of treatment • Audit: to determine whether all of the standards are being complied with • Frequency of monitoring is dependent on the size (volume supplied) of the supply • Monitoring must be done at the tap

6. Monitoring Serious monitoring deficiency • 26% of public Group Water Schemes and 10% of private Group Water Schemes not monitored • Insufficient no.s of check and audit samples at a large number of public water supplies • 30 LAs did not identify private supplies covered by the Regs • Most sanitary authorities did not analyse all the parameters required by the Regs • Only 8 LAs met the monitoring requirements of the Regs for Public WSs and Group WSs

7. Overall Quality

8. Microbiological Quality

9. Microbiological Quality • Notes: • Most Public WSs with E. coli were small Public WS (99.4% of samples analysed in supplies serving >5,000 persons complied • The majority of E. coli non-compliances in PWSs were one off incidents and were moderate.

10. Microbiological Issues • Summary of Main Issues: • A high proportion of private group water schemes were contaminated • A significant number of public water supplies showed intermittent contamination • Insufficient data to determine the quality of the private water supplies (that have a public or commercial activity on them)

11. Chemical Quality

12. Chemical Quality • 100% compliance for 11 chemical parameters. • Compliance >99% for all chemical paramters except: • Bromate – 97.2% • Fluoride – 96.1% • Lead – 98.3% • Trihalomethanes – 96.7% • These are all of concern as all these parameters (except fluoride) will have more stringent standards in 2008 (bromate and trihalomethanes) and 2013 (lead)

13. Indicator Quality

14. Indicator Quality • Compliance for indicator lower than microbiological and chemical. • Implications of a non-compliance are less significant for indicator parameters • Some important indicators eg aluminium • Work needed to improve compliance with these parameters

15. Summary of Quality • The quality of water supplied in the majority of public water supplies is satisfactory though some work on E. coli and some of chemicals necessary • The quality of water supplied in a large proportion of private group water schemes is unsatisfactory and in many cases poor. • There is insufficient monitoring of the private/commerical supplies to determine any meaningful trends.

16. Corrective Actions • Article 9 of Regs requires that every non-compliance is investigated to determine its cause • Microbiological and Chemical non-compliances must be corrected • Inidicator non-compliances must be corrected where there is a danger to public health (directly or indirectly) • Corrective action programmes must be prepared

17. Corrective Actions • EPA audits indicate that numerous non-compliances are not being fully investigated • Therefore corrective action is not being undertaken

18. Recommendations: Monitoring Sanitary authorities must: • Review monitoring programmes to ensure minimum monitoring requirements are met (in terms of numbers of samples and parameters analysed) • Utilise monitoring programme developed under the Drinking Water National Monitoring Programme – county specific disc identifying monitoring requirements issued to local authorities • Identify and monitor small private supplies that supply water as part of a public or commercial activity (cf EPA Circular)

19. Recommendations: Quality Sanitary authorities must: • Develop a documented protocol for dealing with all non-compliances • Investigate all non-compliances • Prepare corrective action programmes where non-compliances exist • Carry out Cryptosporidium risk assessments and act on results

20. Recommendations: Quality Specific Recommendations: • Install continuous chlorine residual monitor at all treatment plants linked to telemetry system • Assess and where appropriate add phosphate dosing to reduce plumbosolveny where it is an issue • Examine methods of disinfection to ensure there are no breaches of bromate or THM standard and consider replacement of disinfectant where this is the problem.

21. Recommendations: GWSs Sanitary authorities must: • Notify group water schemes where there is a quality deficiency identified via montoring • Require the GWS to prepare a corrective action programme • Utilise powers available to them under Article 14 where GWSs have quality deficiency and have not prepared corrective action programme

22. Further Information “The Quality of Drinking Water in Ireland: A Report for the Year 2004” downloadable from: www.epa.ie/NewsCentre/ReportsPublications/Water/DrinkingWaterReports/ Full monitoring results for 2004 available at: www.epa.ie/OurEnvironment/Water/DrinkingWater/ European Communities (Drinking Water) Regulations: A Handbook on Implmentation for Sanitary Authorities available at above link also.