Irish Water has extended the statutory consultation period of the draft Regional Water Resource Plan Eastern and Midlands (RWRP-EM) and associated SEA Environmental Report and Natura Impact Statement (NIS).
Irish Water is now inviting feedback on the Plan and associated environmental documents, which were published for statutory consultation on Tuesday 14 December, until Friday 25 March 2022.
Irish Water’s National Water Resources Plan will be the first resources plan for entire public water supply in Ireland. The RWRP-EM will set out how the utility will balance the supply and demand for drinking water over the short, medium and long term in the Eastern and Midlands. It is a 25-year strategy to ensure we have a safe, sustainable, secure and reliable drinking water supply for everyone.
This is an opportunity for the public and interested stakeholders to feed into the process of how Irish Water identifies the issues and opportunities for the water supply and how solutions are found, before they are applied to in the Region.
Following the adoption of the National Plan -Framework Plan (the Framework Plan) in the summer of 2021 Irish Water is now in phase 2 of the plan which involves preparing four Regional Water Resources Plans where the process set out in the Framework Plan are applied to all of the 539 individual water supplies that make up the public water supply in Ireland.
There are 201 Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) in the Eastern and Midlands Region, which collectively serve 2.48 million people or 60% of the population of Ireland, via approximately 19,000 kilometres of distribution network and 134 Water Resource Zones.
The treatment plants also serve 76,000 businesses. The region itself covers approximately 20,900 square kilometres extending from the Shannon Estuary in the south west, towards the large River Boyne catchment and Greater Dublin Area (GDA) in the north east.
The four regions are;
- Regional Water Resources Plan: North West
- Regional Water Resources Plan: South West
- Regional Water Resources Plan: South East
- Regional Water Resources Plan: Eastern and Midlands
The preferred options from the draft plan include:
Reducing the number of Water Resource Zones (WRZ) in the Eastern and Midlands Region from 134 to 93 and developing larger interconnected WRZs for the urban areas in the region. This will allow a move away from a fragmented supply, with large variations in levels of service, to an interconnected supply with better outcomes for all water users.
- Upgrades to 136 existing water treatment plants, in terms of quantity and quality performance.
- Development of four new water treatment plants (WTPs).
- Proposed decommissioning 66 WTPs.
- Interconnecting 50 supplies via 860 kilometres of trunk mains.
- Reducing leakage from the current level of 38% of regional demand to less than 22% of regional demand by 2033 - representing a 45% reduction in leakage from 2019 to 2034.
Click here to view the draft RWRP-EM and associated environmental reports.