Long before the troika decreed it, the need for a mechanism for charging domestic customers for the provision of water was well recognised.
Since the abolition of rates in 1978, there has been a lack of investment in water infrastructure. Thus today, the Dublin regional supply of treated water, which serves 39 per cent of the State’s population, is described as being “on a knife edge”, with spare capacity 1 per cent above what is used daily.
The situation is no different nationally, with almost all local authorities struggling to provide enough potable water for domestic and commercial users.
The lack of investment has restricted not only the production of drinking water, but the development of every element of the infrastructure, from reservoir to tap.
Unaccounted-for water – the difference between the water produced and consumed – is running at more than 40 per cent nationally, with some local authorities faring worse than others. It is this missing water that presents the greatest threat to householders and their pockets.
In 1997, leakage rates in the Dublin region became so high that water had to be cut off every night for nine months. Dublin City Council embarked on a major project to repair leaks in the city’s largely Victorian mains network.
“When we went into a lot of the older areas every time we fixed a leak we created 12 more because the mains were so fragile that just by touching them, they started to fall apart,” says the council’s executive manager Tom Leahy.
“It was only the rust holding them together.”
The project had considerable success, however, reducing leakage in the public mains from 42 per cent to 28 per cent. “By the year 2000 we were at a situation where we were at 28 per cent, and we confirmed that you would never get leakage below 28 per cent until you started to replace, rather than just repair, the old mains.”
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After several years of planning, the Dublin Region Watermain Rehabilitation project began in 2006. It is not due for completion until 2020. To date, 120km of public water mains have been replaced and there are about 1,400km left to do.
The council engineers assessed that about 50 per cent of pipes needed replacement and the result was that unaccounted-for water related to rehabilitated mains fell to about 18 per cent.
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Thinking their assessment had not been zealous enough, the water main replacement rate was increased to 60 to 70 per cent, but unaccounted-for water stayed at 18 per cent. At 90 per cent replacement, there was still no reduction in missing water. Eventually the council selected an area and replaced every single mains pipe – and missing water was still at 18 per cent.
In 2010, the council embarked on a pilot project in the Merrion Gates area of the city. “We put check meters in every house in the area, 220 houses in all, so we could account for every drop of water.
Three houses in particular had astronomically high usage. One house was using the equivalent of 80 houses’ worth of water, another using the same as 50 houses and a third the equivalent of 30 houses,” Leahy says. This was the first sign of the extent of leaks on the network’s private or household side.
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“The sheer scale of the problem surprised us. Invariably what we found were leaks in the front garden – rarely was it a leak in the house or a dripping tap. Most of the houses were unaware of it because it did not affect their level of service. The leaks were going into the ground and vanishing.”
This is the appalling vista for householders – paying for water that disappears into the ground. When water meters are installed they will be put at the property boundary, so any water going inside the garden gate will be metered, whether it is used or not.
The council studies indicate that 50 per cent of leaks are on the customer side and in some cases are even greater than on the public side. For some households, such as the three identified in the Merrion area, the cost of metered water would be astronomical.
“From our experience to date, about 7 to 10 per cent of houses in Dublin have what we would term extraordinary usage, driven by leakage on the customer side . . . Metering will identify where the worst problems are – then it is a matter of working with the householder to address those problems.”
It is very unlikely water charges will be set at a level where they cover costs of water production, Leahy says. In Britain, water authorities decided it was more economical to part-fund the replacement of customer pipes than to allow such wastage and such initiatives would have to be considered here, he adds.
“It may very well be as we work through the rehabilitation programme, [that] if the contractor is there we may be able to get very good discounted rates for the work. We don’t want to be producing water that’s going to be leaking into the ground.”
