RESIDENTS IN AN area of a Co Kildare town have been left with limited access to water for more than a week due to a burst water main.
Uisce Éireann has extended the timeline of works to repair the main, with the most recent update pushing the scheduled finish time of works from 10am this morning to 6pm this evening.
Several housing estates in Celbridge in east Kildare have been affected by the disruption, which began on Tuesday, 2 April.
Local councillor Nuala Killeen has said that a large number of residents have contacted elected representatives to raise the problem and try to find some clarity about when it might be resolved.
Speaking to The Journal, Killeen said that water was turned down to a trickle in parts of Celbridge while Uisce Éireann tried to address the burst water main.
“It happened last Tuesday, so yesterday was day eight of them having no water,” she said.
“Some of the houses have a trickle and some of the houses have no water, so they’re filling buckets to flush the loos and whatnot. They can’t use showers, toilets, washing machines.”
This morning, Uisce Éireann’s website advised customers that works were scheduled to take place until 10am and to allow around two to three after the estimated restoration time for the supply to fully return.
However, that has now been extended until 6pm.
On previous days, Killeen said that Uisce Éireann had advised customers that works were scheduled until 5pm on the respective evenings and that it would be restored within a couple of hours, but the evenings came and went and households still had limited or no access to water.
“That leads to huge frustration,” she said, calling for Uisce Éireann to improve its system notifications and communication with households.
Killeen said there has “been a series of outages in Celbridge and Leixlip over the last few years”.
“There’s 20,000 people almost living in each town, so there’s high usage, and there’s new housing development all the time. You need a significant and robust water supply for those populations,” she said.
“It’s complicated, I’m not saying it’s not complicated, but what I’m saying is that people get very frustrated when they don’t know what the story is.”
She also expressed disappointment that Uisce Éireann had not deployed water tankers as a temporary solution.
“Most people who are able-bodied and have a car, they’ll go to the shop, they’ll buy water, people will self problem-solve. They might do the washing at a friend or family’s house. But there are people who don’t have those supports.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say