Water restrictions will continue in the Dublin area until at least tomorrow night despite significant progress in replenishing the city’s reservoirs.
Dublin City Council said it needed to continue to monitor demand over the next couple of days in order to gauge what impact the re-opening of schools and the full return of business following the Christmas holidays would have on supplies.
A spokesman for the council said it was eager to “maintain the necessary quantum of water in storage in preparation for any further weather events” over the next six to eight weeks. He was hopeful the added demand today would not have a big impact on conservation efforts.
The spokesman said pressure reductions and cut-offs would be applied to supplies from 7pm today until 7am tomorrow. The same restrictions will apply from tomorrow evening through to 7am on Wednesday.
Dublin City Council said 554.1 million litres were produced yesterday and that 520.7 million litres were used. This allowed some 33 million litres to be put into storage.
"This means we are making good progress in our objective of replenishing storage at Stillorgan Reservoir," the council spokesman said.
Storage levels at Stillorgan reservoir stood at just over 700 million litres today, not far below their ideal level of 750 million litres, he said.
Council workers are continuing to repair broken water mains at a rate of about 10 per day, but are now seeing a reduction in the numbers of burst mains.
Two prolonged spells of freezing weather in December caused significant damage to water infrastructure across the country with large amounts of water being lost due to these burst pipes and mains and homeowners leaving their taps running.
Dublin City Council said leaks were becoming more difficult to detect as water was not reaching the surface in most cases and that teams were using listening equipment to locate the remaining issues in the network.
Meanwhile, Fingal County Council said it would continue to enfore restrictions on water supply tonight and tomorrow. It said levels in its reservoirs had "increased marginally over recent days" and that it hoped the restrictions could be eased over the coming weeks.
From 7pm today until 7am tomorrow supply will be restricted to residents of: Malahide, Portmarnock, Balbriggan, Bremore, Balrothery, Clonsilla, Porterstown, Clonee, Barnhill, Westmanstown, Lucan, Littlepace, Castaheany, Huntstown, Hansfield/Ongar, Mulhuddart, Blanchardstown and Kinsealy.
