Irish Water has reported almost 9,000 incidents to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2014, exclusive figures shared with Buzz have revealed.
The 8,870 incidents included breaches of its EPA wastewater treatment licences and events which risked contamination of surface water, ground water or land.
Among the reports are repeated overflows of untreated sewage, pollutants left in water and even explosions.
Read More: Hundreds of septic tanks risking human health and environment, say Environmental Protection Agency
While 92 per cent posed a low risk of harm to the environment, hundreds were more serious and may have contributed to pollution of our water, land and air.
The breaches took place at 772 of Irish Water's 1,105 wastewater treatment plants, sewers and pumping stations across the country, which are regulated by the EPA.
The sheer number of reports lays bare the crumbling condition of Ireland’s national water infrastructure, which has seen decades of underinvestment.
Today, almost half of all wastewater from large urban areas in Ireland is not treated to EU standards, while raw sewage from almost 60,000 people in 34 towns and villages flows directly into the environment every day. At the same time, surface water quality across Ireland is in steep decline – with wastewater leaks and spills playing a significant role.
Irish Water has been prosecuted by the EPA eight times since 2019 for some of these failures. It was fined a total of just €15,400, a fraction of its €1.06 billion revenue in 2020.
The water company told Buzz it is working closely with the EPA to deliver a “modern, sustainable and functional water network”. It added, “Over a billion litres of wastewater are collected every day in Ireland’s public sewers and treated at treatment plants before being released safely back into the environment.”
The EPA classifies each incident into one of three categories (minor, limited or serious) according to its impact on the environment.
Twelve incidents at Irish Water plants since 2014 were considered “serious”, meaning they had “widespread effects of extended duration”, such as damaging ecosystems or significantly affecting water quality, agriculture, commerce or humans.
Almost all involved uncontrolled releases of untreated wastewater or sewage into the environment, with causes ranging from broken or blocked sewers to bad weather, power failures and issues with infrastructure. Many of the releases will have ended up in rivers, lakes or the sea.
Three serious incidents, all uncontrolled releases, happened in just one place – the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant in Dublin.
Locals and campaigners have long accused overflows from the plant, which is operated by Celtic Anglian Water, of damaging water quality in Dublin Bay. The plant was designed for a population of 1.64 million but is now serving around 2.3 million – and will be considered “overloaded” until an ongoing €500 million upgrade is completed in 2025.
Other serious incidents were reported at wastewater systems in Balbriggan in Dublin; Castlefinn, Co Donegal; Cavan Town; Cork City; Doon in Limerick; Roscommon Town; and Tullamore, Co Offaly.
An additional 674 “limited” incidents nationwide included failing to remove nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater, less serious overflows and spills and issues with biological sludge used to clean the water.
The remaining 8,184 breaches were classified as “minor”, meaning they had at most a small impact on the environment.
However, Darragh Page of the EPA's office of environmental enforcement told Buzz repeated patterns of minor breaches can still be a cause for concern and may lead to an investigation or even prosecution.
“Certainly low level, ongoing pollution [or] breaches of a licence could have just as much if not a bigger impact than once-off pollution incidents, it just depends on the individual circumstances,” he said.
Irish Water told Buzz many incidents involve factors such as “adverse weather events, shock loads, blocked sewers due to fats, oils and greases or wastewater litter such as wet wipes being flushed down toilets and storm water overflows” and are “not necessarily reflective of the performance of a wastewater treatment plant”.
Page said the EPA expects municipal wastewater infrastructure to be “robust enough to cope” with bad weather and flooding. “They should be planning for those kinds of things.”
The number of serious and limited breaches has been dropping steadily since 2014, when Irish Water took over wastewater treatment from local authorities.
But incidents overall fell just 13 per cent between 2014 and 2021 despite Irish Water investing more than €1.6 billion in infrastructure upgrades.
The water company said a factor in this is “increased training and awareness amongst all staff and plant operators as to what constitutes an incident and the necessary reporting obligations”.
This raises the point that most incidents are self-reported to the EPA by Irish Water or its plant operators. Could many more be going unreported?
In one case, the agency successfully prosecuted Irish Water for failing to notify the EPA and other authorities of three discharges of raw sewage into the Liffey upstream from a drinking water source point.
However, Page said, “for the most part, it's our view that the majority of them do seem to be notifying us”. EPA inspectors also carry out unannounced inspections and monitoring to catch unreported issues.
National and European authorities have been flagging problems with Ireland’s wastewater treatment system for years.
In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that 28 towns and villages in Ireland were not complying with the EU’s urban wastewater treatment directive, which sets basic limits on pollutants. As of late last year, 11 were still failing to meet the standard, risking large fines.
The EPA has also named 97 priority areas in Ireland where wastewater treatment needs improvement. Of those areas, 34 do not treat their wastewater at all. Instead, raw sewage pours straight into the environment, often the sea. This impacts both marine ecosystems and bathing water quality.
The regulator has accused Irish Water of being too slow to implement much-needed upgrades and repeatedly extending its timelines to complete works.
“While there have been improvements in recent years, wastewater treatment [in] many areas is still not as good as it needs to be,” the EPA wrote in a 2020 report. “Substantial and sustained investment will be required over several years to bring treatment at all these areas up to standard.”
However, Elaine McGoff, Natural Environment Officer at An Taisce, told Buzz that Irish Water inherited “really dodgy infrastructure”.
“We give them a hard time but they actually haven't been given enough money by the government to upgrade,” she said.
“So ultimately, although Irish Water takes the flak, it should be the government that is in the firing line more than anybody else.”
Sinead O’Brien of the Sustainable Water Network (SWAN) told Buzz the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has failed to come up with a clear plan of action on wastewater pollution.
“There’s too much whataboutery going on. The government has to be seen to be getting its own shop in order.”
Irish Water’s struggle to bring our infrastructure up to scratch matters when Ireland’s water quality and aquatic ecosystems are in ongoing decline.
While there are many more sources of contamination affecting waterways, such as agricultural run-off, domestic septic tanks and industrial activities, the EPA has called wastewater “one of the main pressures on the quality of our inland and coastal waters”.
The agency attributes 13 per cent of the “unsatisfactory” rivers, lakes and coastal waters around Ireland to urban waste water pollution.
The number of “high status” water bodies dropped from 500 in the late 1980s to just 20 by 2018. According to SWAN, more than half of Irish rivers, lakes and estuaries are in an unhealthy state and sewage is the main source of pollution in 208 water bodies.
“50 per cent of our rivers and lakes are in less than good ecological status, which means that they are polluted,” McGoff said.
“Eventually, when things get really bad, it can become a dead zone – you might have seen ponds and lakes where it looks like pea soup, nothing can grow there any more.”
Human health impacts are rarer, but still a danger.
While 99.5 per cent of Irish drinking water is safe, the dangerous germs cryptosporidium and giardia, which come from stool contamination, were detected in 18 public supplies during 2020.
Ireland has higher levels of VTEC E. coli infection than any other EU country.
“If people knew [about those] serious health impacts, then maybe they would pay more attention,” McGoff said.
“Because it's hard to get people to care about, you know, little insects living in water.”
“That's the thing – water pollution is invisible. People really don't know what we're losing because it's all happening below the surface.
