The first chemical-free water treatment plant in the Republic has been opened in Co Monaghan.
Its unique design, using ozone gas, may be applied extensively in an effort to bring hundreds of group water schemes up to EU drinking-water standards.
The £600,000 plant, which will serve 500 houses in the Glaslough-Tyholland group water scheme beside Lough Emy, was opened yesterday by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, who said it represented "a landmark for rural water consumers" and reflected the intensive effort to bring their supplies up to standard.
The plant is the first of five pilot water-treatment plants designed to overcome acute quality problems in Irish group schemes. It was built in a public-private partnership between the scheme's owners: the National Federation of Group Water Schemes (NFGWS), Monaghan County Council, the Department of the Environment and an Irish company, Fay Environmental Ltd, which developed the new system.
The NFGWS said it represented a highly efficient means of eliminating contamination in group schemes and preventing generation of significant quantities of iron- and aluminium-based sludge wastes. Its chairman and joint national co-ordinator, Mr Bernard Keeley, noted it did not create any waste sludge and yet was totally environmentally friendly.
Most water-treatment plants use aluminium- or iron-based flocculants (to aggregate solid contaminants or pollutants before their removal). This, however, results in a build-up of sludge which many landfills cannot take as it has a high metal content.
The Fay Environmental system uses a very fine filtering system to take off initial impurities. The filtered water is tanked and treated with ozone gas, a powerful oxidising agent which disinfects the water and removes any undesirable colours. A small amount of chlorine is added to water after treatment to ensure continuing disinfection in a reservoir.
Fay Environmental's managing director, Mr Jim Fay, said the development of chemical-free water technology had significant implications for local authorities, industry, tourism, agriculture and domestic water-users.
His company had developed the "Chemless" system in response to the urgent need recognised by group water schemes "to improve the quality of drinking water, bringing it up to EU standards in an affordable way with minimum disruption to consumers and without negative impact on the environment".
The reintroduction of water charges is not about to be forced on the Government by the EU, a Department of the Environment spokesman has said.
This is despite a move in the European Parliament this week calling for all member-states to apply charges on the basis of "the polluter pays".
