Published: Thursday, 18th March, 2010 1:05pm

Big freeze has highlighted need for construction standards enforcement

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The big freeze experienced this winter has put a focus on the standards of construction in Westmeath after a number of houses throughout the county experienced freezing-up of water services.

Westmeath County Manager Danny McLoughlin, addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government last week, said the debate about enforcement standards of construction had come to the fore as a result of the freeze. The Committee was meeting to discuss the management of severe weather events last week.

Mr. McLoughlin said the council inspected about 15% of all housing estates under the building legislation.

"The debate about the enforcement of standards of construction has come to the fore as a result of the freezing-up of services. The local authority exercises a voluntary code whereby up to 15% of all developments are inspected under the building control legislation and to go beyond this level would require more substantial resourcesm," Mr. McLoughlin told the committee. He added: "There is an onus on individual purchasers to have the services checked and so on."

He explained that there was a lack of knowledge regarding the responsibilities of people on the ground and where the boundaries of responsibility lay with regard to service pipes and stop-cocks.

Mr McLoughlin said the water supply problems associated with the adverse weather were primarily centred around Mullingar, and had to do with the fact that - ironically - as the freeze set in, the demand for water locally rose substantially.

"The main water source in the centre of county Westmeath is Lough Owel at Mullingar. When the raw water temperatures plunge as they did, this gives rise to additional pressures and difficulties with regard to water treatment. Our average consumption is approximately 20,000 cu m per day and this increased to 22,500 cu m per day. This was accompanied by freezing pipes. Once people were advised of the problem, they started to use water in a counter-intuitive fashion. Rather than conserve water, they started to use water," he said.

Mr McLoughlin said consumption had exceeded production, which was a real problem, and was primarily association with leaks and with people allowing taps to run during the night.

"This is a proven fact and is not conjecture. The flows in the wastewater treatment systems during night hours clearly indicate that people were running taps during the night," he told the comittee.

"A clear issue emerging is that messages to conserve water appear to be counter-intuitive because on certain occasions that message was followed by a 25% increase in consumption rather than a reduction," he added.

Speaking about how Westmeath County Council had coped during the big freeze he said crisis meetings were held twice a day.

"We established an incident room on 29 December with twice-daily crisis management team meetings. Telephones were manned on a 24-seven basis and also at weekends by four staff. Four emergency out-of-hours numbers were also made available," he said.

He told the committee that from December 12 to January 14, a 34-day period, there were 34 gritting events, whereas during a normal season the number would be 35 for the full season.

"During that period, the council fixed about 250 leaks and the Army and Civil Defence were deployed with water tankers. We erected about 25 water stand-pipes," he said.