TWO GALWAY local authorities have warned of water cuts and low pressure in parts of the city and county due to weather factors.
Galway county and city councils say areas on higher ground will be most affected, including the commuter villages of Barna and Moycullen, on the city-county boundary, and that water tankers are to be deployed.
Residents in some parts of the two villages and neighbouring townlands have been without water, or experiencing intermittent supply, for the past five days.
However, Moycullen residents intend to hold a public meeting on the issue later this week, pointing out that they have experienced such cuts for the past five years.
The local authorities said that while “intermittent supply was restored to many areas over the weekend, adverse weather conditions affected production capacity and have hindered efforts to recharge reservoirs to restore full supply to all affected areas”.
Water tankers are being deployed in Tonabrucky, close to the reservoir, in Killagoola near Moycullen and at Barna, near the old waterworks at Furrymelia West. The local authorities say water from tankers should be boiled as a precautionary measure. Low pressure and “possible outages” may also occur in some areas served by the Clifton Hill reservoir on the city’s Circular Road, the authorities said.
The two authorities said they were “working closely together to resolve the situation”.
Moycullen community activist Noel Thomas, a landscape gardener and father of a young family, said he believed his village was bearing the burden of inadequate infrastructure supplying the city.
“The local authority keeps telling us that this is a temporary problem, when we know it is a basic infrastructural issue,” he said. A Moycullen neighbour, Mari Uí Neachtáin, was forced to leave her home with her husband and four children last Christmas when they had no water, and therefore no heating, from Christmas Day until New Year’s Eve.
The local authorities said that while many areas would have no disruption to supply, the “best projection at this point” was that higher areas would experience interruptions until at least tomorrow.
Customers in the county area are asked to check www.galway.ie or telephone (091) 476401. Customers in the city area can check the website or phone (091) 536400.
