Urgent solution sought for south Leitrim Group Water Scheme problem

Leitrim County Council engineering staff have walked a significant part of the Drumbranad Group Water Scheme in a bid to find a solution to ongoing water supply issues.
Over the last five months the private group water scheme has been without water on three occasions with one incident lasting 11 days.
The most recent outage occurred as a result of low reservoir levels on the public scheme after a pump tripped at the Carrick-on-Shannon Water Treatment Plant.
Although supply was restored within 24 hours to the public water supply some homes on the private group water scheme, which feeds off the public supply, were left without water for a week.
Leitrim County Council provided tanker water supplies to homes in the area in the interim but an urgent solution is required to ensure that further outages don't impact those on the scheme going forward say residents.
Local spokesperson, Francie Gilmartin said an engineer from the Council walked the scheme and is now looking at the possibility of replacing 1.5km of pipe on the scheme in a bid to reduce pumping pressure for the supply.
“The engineer is doing up a proposal and sending it in to see if we could get a grant for this work. Once we get all the information we can in for the proposals we will have a meeting of the Group Water Scheme to see how we can go forward,” he said.
Unfortunately, because the group water scheme is privately owned, works on the scheme have to be financed by the residents or through infrastructural grants.
Irish Water had been criticised for not intervening in the situation but the reality is that, until a private scheme is taken in charge it doesn't fall under the remit of Irish Water.
A spokesperson for Irish Water explained customers affected by water supply issues on the Drumbranad Group Water Scheme should contact the scheme operators directly.
“The problems these customers are experiencing are within the group water scheme which isn’t operated by Irish Water. It’s not a case of Irish Water washing it’s hands of this issue. The customers need to contact the operators of the group water scheme to report the problems.
“The group water scheme is not operated by Irish Water. The Rural Water Section of Leitrim County Council may be able to provide further information as they have responsibility for group water schemes.”