Water crisis affects NI schools

NI Water’s director of engineering procurement, Trevor Haslett, has said that the company has been “on top of” finding, fixing and repairing leaks during the water crisis.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, Mr Haslett defended NI Water’s decision not to seek help from Water UK sooner.

Water UK supports water companies and can give help and equipment in crises.

Mr Haslett said that NI Water had “deployed sufficient resources on the ground” since the water crisis began.

“We brought in our own contracting staff and engineers locally,” he said.

“Any additional resources that we required were certainly brought in. We have numerous contractors working for us around the clock.”

The comments come as NI Water is facing mounting criticism over its handling of the water crisis and UUP leader Tom Elliott has said the minister responsible for NI Water, Conor Murphy, should resign.

Thousands of homes and businesses have experienced water shortages since a period of intensely cold weather in late December ended and pipes began to leak as the ice inside them melted.

The water supply to thousands of homes in Northern Ireland was again disrupted overnight as about 40,000 properties in NI Water’s eastern region had their mains water supplies temporarily cut off.

Service was due to be restored at 0800GMT, although NI Water said it could take up to three hours for it to reach all customers.

The company said on Sunday night that the number of homes without running water had fallen to just under 1,000.

When asked why NI Water had not asked for equipment or engineers from Water UK, Mr Haslett said that “there was no requirement” to do so.

“At peak we had 26 local tankers and we still have some tankers operating, filling the smaller reservoirs.”

He said that requesting extra help from outside Northern Ireland was considered by the incident team and any help needed had been asked for.

“We are still putting 250m litres a day into the system, which was reduced to about 20m a day over the weekend,” he said.

“It’s a process that takes time from Boxing Day until last Friday when the situation improved significantly and we got the number without water down to under 1,000 customers.”

The NI Water director explained the company gets about 50% of its water from Lough Neagh and said that “in fact all of our raw water sources are actually intact”.

“It’s the service reservoirs, basically large concrete tanks, we probably have about 1,200 of these around the country and we have some very large ones around Belfast and it’s the Belfast ones which have been causing us difficulty,” he said.

“Normally at this time of year they would be about four metres full of water, over the last week some of them have been down to half a metre. In fact last Thursday the large service reservoir at Breda actually ran out of water.”

Mr Haslett said that where the company did need help, was “obviously” in answering phone calls from customers.

On New Year’s Eve, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Owen Paterson announced that NI Water had accepted an offer of 70 call handlers to help manage the 600 to 700 calls per hour the company was receiving.

The help was made available in accordance with the mutual aid arrangements overseen by Water UK in partnership with Defra.

Speaking on Friday, Mr Paterson said he had had several meetings with the first, deputy first and other ministers and “made it clear that the UK Government was ready to provide practical assistance to help deal with the dreadful circumstances that thousands of people in Northern Ireland have found themselves in”.

“It was clear that a major failing was the difficulty people had in getting information from a system that was overwhelmed by the volume of calls to the extent that only 40% of between 600 and 700 calls per hour were being answered,” he said.

Mr Haslett said that NI Water had not asked for the call handlers earlier because it “had a clear understanding that the mutual agreement did not include access to call handlers”.

He said that the company would be looking at any other assistance it might require, but “with the number of customers reducing significantly, we certainly have enough resources locally” to handle the situation.

Meanwhile, dozens of schools may be unable to re-open due to water damage.

The Department of Education said it would consult with the education boards on Monday and publish a list of those schools affected.

Even customers not affected by burst pipes had their water supplies cut off overnight to allow reservoirs to be replenished.

A full list of areas where the water supply has been turned off is available on the NI Water website, along with a list of locations where temporary water supplies have been set up.

The main affected areas are parts of Cookstown, Dungannon, Newry and Warrenpoint, and some 500 NI Water staff are dealing with those properties.

State-owned NI Water, which is the sole provider of water and sewerage services in Northern Ireland, said it would be “at least three or four more days” before everyone was reconnected.

While NI Water has responsibility for leaking pipes in the main system, its responsibility ends when the supply enters properties.

However, many of the leaks are understood to be within unoccupied homes and businesses, and the company has urged customers to check their properties and have the pipes repaired as soon as possible.

Bill Gowdy, from the water company, said: “We do urge owners of properties, of vacant properties, of outbuildings, please go and check to see if there’s any leaks because there’s a significant number of leaks on private property.”

NI Water has again warned that bogus callers are taking advantage of the crisis.

The company is urging householders approached by people wanting to examine their property for leaks to thoroughly check their identity.

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