Uisce \u00c9ireann has said it is “well prepared” as it is due to carry out its largest ever repair this weekend.<\/p>\n
It will repair up to 15 leaks on its supply line from Ballymore Eustace in Co Kildare to Saggart in Co Dublin.<\/p>\n
The supply line carries over 200 million litres of water every day, one-third of all the supply to the Greater Dublin area.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Uisce \u00c9ireann\u2019s Regional Operations Senior Manager for Drinking Water for the East Region Stephen Burke said the pipe is “the most critical water main in the country”, which supplies about one-third of the water to over 1.7 million people across Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.<\/p>\n
“It’s carrying more water than any other water main in the country,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke said Uisce \u00c9ireann identified a number of leaks on the pipe as well as a number of pipe sections that are at risk of failure.<\/p>\n
“The works we’re going to be commencing this afternoon and evening involve the 15 leak repairs, but we’re also replacing two large pipe sections at two different locations and each pipe section that we’re replacing is about the size of a railway carriage,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very, very complex engineering challenge and it’s very specialist. The actual leak repairs are being carried out internally,” Mr Burke added.<\/p>\n
He said once the water has been switched off, 300 workers will enter the pipe and they will walk up to 300 meters along the pipe to reach the repair locations.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very dark, damp environment, 300 metres is the same as three football pitches, so it’s a fairly daunting task and it’s not for the faint-hearted,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been practising and training for this for many months, so we’re well prepared.”<\/p>\n
Mr Burke said if all goes “according to plan”, people should not expect to be without water for the weekend.<\/p>\n
“We’ve given ourselves 27 hours from start to finish to complete the works,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Our treated water storage is healthy and if the works get done within the 27 hours, which hopefully they will, the impact should be very minimal,” he said.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Burke said about 1,000 properties in Kildare who are fed directly off the pipe in Arthurstown and Tipperkevin in north Kildare may experience reduced supply.<\/p>\n
As a nationwide water conservation order is still in place, Mr Burke said he is asking households to be “mindful of the value of water”.<\/p>\n
“While this pipe is out, our storage levels will drop by approximately 250 million litres over the duration of the work.<\/p>\n
“If ever there was a time for people to be conscientious of their water usage, particularly in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow, we would ask everyone to continue to support us by only using what they need to use, not to use the hose and just help us as much as they can by keeping water usage to only what’s essential,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke said local road closures around Hartwell and north Kildare will be kept to a minimum during the works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uisce \u00c9ireann has said it is “well prepared” as it is due to carry out its largest ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-576932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}