Northern Ireland's water crisis

I think the whole NI water response was an absolute joke to be honest. I even know of numerous people who had no water (or electric) last winter for more than 3 days..... and they are now suffering this year again because the same pipes have burst - or their water has been turned off. One of the snippets from their response to the problem.....

"We had the Troubles and that has led to a level of underinvestment in the network which is now manifesting some problems for us which we're trying to deal with as fast as we can."

FFS - the troubles ended years ago - what have they done since then. They only serve a little over 1.5 million customers, have just 20% of the mains pipes that Thames water have - and have assets of over £5Billion.

But then - this is Northern Ireland. If it's not a power cut (which we get usually 5 times a year here with no explanation), no phone signal or no water - it's a terrible road infrastructure or no TV signal.

Most of our services are operating at about 10% efficiency with 4 times as many staff as comparable operations elsewhere - and they can't even manage to get the damage limitation right when they knew there was most cetainly going to be major problems occuring after such a bad freeze.
 
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IceBus said:
Years of underinvestment, and a 'government' that couldn't find it's arse with a map and compass.

What I love best is NI Water's website with a list of towns that have been affected, which basically just seems to be an alphabetical list of major towns in NI. We've got nothing at all in South Belfast.
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Add too that the largest body of fresh water in the British Isles and one of the largest in europe, the mismanagement becomes comical.
 
Had no water from yesterday morning, went around half the town trying to get some water.

Ended with with about 10 litres and will use a barrel outside for the toilet.

Council here have provided showers for people to use if needs be and water at loads of its sites.


But i do agree with it, being a bit of a joke. They don't seem to be rushing out to fix it!!

In Armagh for example they just cut the main supply to the whole town, so they can fix the pipes.

I think there is more than 40k affected to be honest, Armagh alone has about 40-50k people and the water is off for a good 90% of it.
 
Thankfully so far so good here. Slight drop in water pressure on Tuesday for a few hours.

Anyone want to buy some water? Head to Castlereagh, I'll sort you out :D
 
teaboy5 said:
In Armagh for example they just cut the main supply to the whole town, so they can fix the pipes.

I think there is more than 40k affected to be honest, Armagh alone has about 40-50k people and the water is off for a good 90% of it.
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How do you expect them to dig up and repair a large water main if it is flooding the hole where they are trying to work, they need to shut it off so they can actually fix it.
 
IceBus said:
Years of underinvestment, and a 'government' that couldn't find it's arse with a map and compass.

What I love best is NI Water's website with a list of towns that have been affected, which basically just seems to be an alphabetical list of major towns in NI. We've got nothing at all in South Belfast.
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Strange I have water in South belfast, neighbour works for water board she is called into work today, expects rolling loss of supply in areas as the pressure is diverted elsewhere to allow resupply.

It is purely underinvestment, both in sewage and water mains maintenance. The past 10 years was a building boom for NI, and not a single developer was asked to supply anything towards sewage of the properties and developments they created.

Planning disaster, wasn't thought of, or was more likely ignored.

Then for past 4 years they have deferred water charges here, as its a wonderful political point to make, but the money has to come from somewhere, and currently it is coming from nowhere. Water charges are a necessity to simply fix the damage that has been allowed to slowly happen, a degrading system slowing falling apart has now been torn asunder by a cold spell, it would have happened anyway, just this has brought in on swiftly, and the bad thing is, they have absoltely no idea how to start fixing it, as there are so many leaks in so many areas its hard to know if fixing some will help the overall picture at all.

Many of the areas affected have no leaks, the leaks are up-pressure, and closer to the supply.
 
I would like to add that each and ever political party in NI is utterly against water charges, yet only one has a policy on how they might rasie the required money otherwise. Their policy is pure fairy tale and unmanagable, the rest claim money can be derived from 'savings' yet can't say where even though every party has representatives in every part of the government here.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Strange I have water in South belfast, neighbour works for water board she is called into work today, expects rolling loss of supply in areas as the pressure is diverted elsewhere to allow resupply.
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Out of interest, what's your postcode? We're BT9 and I thought everything from BT4-BT10 was cut off.

I wouldn't mind at all if there was some sort of progress report - i.e. we've fixed this, still have problems here and estimate this will by done by X. The complete lack of info does not inspire confidence.
 
Girlfriend is having to head to a leisure center to have a shower and grab free bottled water.

She lives in Belfast though. I live just outside it and haven't a problem. Might do shortly though if the rumours are to believed.
 
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