Water & Wastewater Treatment

12 | FEBRUARY 2016 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Industry leader Jerry Grant, Head of Asset Management, Irish Water "We recognise that the support for the utility was not there in the beginning, but the change in public perception will come about through delivery." Interview by James Brockett I rish Water has just celebrated its second birthday, having come into being on 1st January 2014, and nobody could accuse it of not making an impact in its first two years. As well as the sometimes painful transition of implementing its national water metering programme and new charging regime for customers, the utility has been grappling with the sizeable task of rationalising and unifying an asset programme previously carried out by 34 local authorities. Major projects such as the upgrade of Dublin's Ringsend wastewater treatment works have been rethought, while the system by which water contractors have been awarded business has undergone radical changes. While recognising that some of these moves may be unpopular in the short term, Irish Water's Head of Asset Management Jerry Grant is clear about their necessity and determined to see things through. He says that the aim of the organisation is to use its advantages of scale and expertise to drive two outcomes - better performance and lower cost – and is under no illusions about the challenges faced in terms of performance. "When we took over the water services in Ireland, a lot had already been done but we had a couple of big ticket gaps," Grant tells WWT. "We have issues with drinking water compliance in respect of THMs in particular. Then we have very significant non-compliances in relation to the urban wastewater directive: 44 towns have no effective wastewater treatment at the moment, including seven relatively large coastal towns, and there is significant non-compliance with phosphorus and nitrogen standards for designated waters. "In that context, the Ringsend project is hugely important, because the Ringsend plant caters for almost 2 million PE, or around 35- 40% of the total wastewater treatment load of the country. Because it is non-compliant, that means that our statistics in terms of population compliance are very poor and it's a really big priority therefore to resolve it." Treating most of the sewage from the Greater Dublin area, the Ringsend plant was originally designed for 1.64 million PE, but has been running over capacity since the day it opened in 2003. The plan which Irish Water inherited would have increased its capacity to 2.1 million and built a 9km sea outfall tunnel for the disposal of the treated wastewater. However, with the project set to consume a huge proportion of the new utility's total budget, and with a high risk of cost overruns, Irish Water went back to the drawing board.

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