A burst water main along Lough Atalia Road caused both flooding and a major water shortage last week, causing several Galway city centre businesses to close.
Four emergency repair crews with heavy machinery struggled to cap the leaks which caused major flooding and traffic disruption, with a stop-go system introduced along one of the city’s main thoroughfares until 10pm last Friday.
Uisce Éireann’s response to the outage last week has been slammed by a city councillor who claims a lack of communication meant business owners had no idea when their water supply would return, prompting several to close because of the uncertainty.
“It’s just not good enough that a city of Galway’s size doesn’t have running water on a Friday evening,” says Councillor Níall McNelis. “Engineers fixed the problem as quick as they could, but the issue is communication: it was impossible to find out what was going on, and when the issue might be sorted. That means businesses in the city – who all pay commercial water rates – had to make the decision to close on a busy Friday in the summer because they had no idea when they could get back water from their taps.”
It is understood a number of pubs, restaurants and a hairdressers in the city centre closed due a lack of water supply, while some hotels activated back-up water storage tanks. Around 500 city centre addresses were affected overall.
Councillor McNelis says an out-of-hours call centre in Cork which handles Uisce Éireann enquiries had “no idea” there was a major outage in Galway, despite several reports being logged and reference numbers issued.
“I am writing to the city manager to highlight several instances of poor communication over the past six months. I know the [city’s] water system is under pressure, but you can’t run a business with uncertainty about water supply,” he said. “It’s happened in residential areas too, and I know of families in areas of Knocknacarra that didn’t have a proper supply for weeks without knowing when it would come back.”
An Uisce Éireann spokeswoman said the burst main on Lough Atalia affected approximately 500 customers along College Road, College Green, The Elms, Fairgreen, Forster Street, Forster Court, St Patrick’s Avenue and Eyre Square.
"Uisce Éireann endeavours to keep customers informed and updated of outages in their area," she said. "In this instance information, including the restoration time, was added to the Uisce Éireann website as soon as possible following notification of the outage. Updates were also posted on the Uisce Éireann X channel, @IWCare."
She said vulnerable customers who had signed up to the priority and special services register were also notified directly.
The utility had no response to claims there were miscommunication issues last Friday, instead inviting people to sign up to its new text messag service at www.IrishWater.ie
Along Lough Atalia Road, two pipes burst: one near the Galmont Hotel, and another near the junction with College Road. Eye witnesses say the road and pavement was completely flooded, with vehicles struggling to drive through up to two feet of fresh water near Lough Atalia playground.
The water utility says that some major works scheduled in Galway city over the coming days may cause further traffic disruption, and temporarily affect water supply in a number of areas.
As part of the National Leakage Reduction Programme, mains repair work in Woodquay, including installing a new water valve on St Brendan’s Avenue, may disrupt water services until today (Thursday ). Mains repair works on Forster Street are scheduled to be completed by tomorrow (Friday ), and a traffic management plan will be in place.
Engineers are also working on repairing the water main in Bohermore and on the Headford Road near Galway Shopping Centre in Terryland.
