"Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink"

Over the last 24hours I have listened to just about everyone I have spoken to complain about the current 'water shortage' we are experiencing, and that this is more akin to a complaint from a 3rd world back water country suffering from famine and disease. Till now I have managed to remain tight lipped about the 'National Water Crisis', which was of course precipitated by the 'National Snow Crisis'.

Firstly we need to look back at the extreme weather conditions we have experienced since the 18th of December last. Over the last month we have seen freezing temperatures reach as low as -13degrees in parts of the country with highs of approximately 0 or 1 degrees during the worst of the weather. Did you know that the freezing temperatures are recorded as low as 90cm below ground level, meaning that it wasn't just the snow that was freezing but the ground itself, and do we know whats in the ground all the water pipes!

Think of this logically what happens when water freezes, it expands you say, and you are dead right, but answer me this, what happens to pipes when water freezes within them? Well for those of you scratching your heads they tend to crack and break! That's what has landed us in this 'National Water Crisis', we do in fact have water to drink, and the mother nature continues to give us water in the form of rain, however with so many damaged and broken pipes mother nature is not giving us the water faster than its leaking out of the system. At one point on Monday consumption in the South Dublin Council Council  area was at 8,000 cubic meters a minute, this was not people using more water this was major leaks within the pipework system. This is why water pressure has been reduced and cut off in the evenings and overnight.

While our Local Authorities work to repair the worst of the damage let us be under no illusion that this is not a quick fix, the damage is extensive and is going to take between 4 & 6months to repair completely, which as you will all have guessed by now will involve digging up roads and streets to get to the pipes. This does however present us with a great opportunity to make drastic improvements in our water infrastructure. Prior to any of the madness that has been the last few months, our water system has been in a grave state of dis-repair for years. In some Local Authority areas I have heard of leakage rates of up to 46% of water supplies lost in transmission from reservoir to your kitchen sink. Local Authorities claim not to have the financial resources to fix the problem and so the idea of introducing water charges to fund the upgrading of the water system was born. What we need to ensure now is that rather than paying for a substandard system we insist that as part of the repairs the upgrades begin and when water charges are brought in at least we are paying for something better!

While this water shortage has caused untold annoyance to ordinary peoples lives there is one clear thing that everyone seems to of forgotten, that is that 'The Water Crisis', has a very real economic impact too, especially given the worldwide recession. On Thursday Baxter's (Yes the guys who make the baked beans), put 40 members of staff on protective notice citing a lack of water with which to manufacture goods to send to market. This is only the first in what could turn out to be a very long line of large high-tech. employers who may start announcing redundancies as they can't manufacture without large volumes of water! The obvious ones are: Intel, IBM, Wyeth and Bristol Myers and Squib. So the old caveat that the biggest disruptions always occur when something we take for granted stops working for a minute holds true.