EMERGENCY HELPLINE- CALL JAMES: +353 87 2606118

WHAT IS MCPA?

Monaghan County Council are the supervisory authority for all private GWSs in Co. Monaghan.

As part their role, Monaghan Co. Co. take a number of water samples each year from the Stranooden GWS’s treated drinking water network.

During this testing, MCPA was in detected in certain water samples taken in 2017 and 2018. MCPA is a selective herbicide, commonly used in Ireland as a rush killer, but is also found in domestic herbicide products. Since March 2018, Stranooden GWS have carried out weekly sampling on the numerous streams and rivers that flow into White Lough to try and determine which parts of the catchment may be contributing mostly towards the problem.

Why Stranooden GWS?

There are a number of reasons why Stranooden GWS was selected to pilot the surface water aspect of the project. As part of Phase I of the project, each GWS throughout the country that abstracts water from a lake source had their lake catchments delineated. A lake catchment simply means the area of land that drains into a river and its tributaries which then flows into a lake.

 

Home Use of MCPA

What we have found that Home users have also been using MCPA. 

Scouring our Water Supply Network

What does this Mean?

  • Scouring of pipes is essential to keep your water at its best.
  • Scouring of pipelines is carried out twice annually by Stranooden ( April/Oct approx.).
  • Your water may appear brown during this process, this is caused by iron and manganese deposits in the pipelines.
  • Your water may appear white, this whiteness is simply tiny air bubbles in the water.
  • The brown colour will pass by allowing your outside tap to run.
  • The air bubbles evaporate and release from the water when in contact with air.
  • Your water will be clear and clean immediately on the completion of scouring.

Is the Water Safe?

  1. When your water effected by scouring, we advise to allow an outside tap to run until our water runs clear.
  2. We advise the switching off of connections during the process to avoid air or discolouration in your system.

Anyone not included that wishes to be included in our text alerts should text their name and number to 0872606118/0873424354 and please include "Add to Text Alerts" in your message.

What is Pipe Scouring ?

Pipe / Air Scouring of water mains is an extremely effective 'non-aggressive' way of cleaning and removing particulate matter from the  water mains that bring safe water home to us.

Air scouring works by flushing a pressureised water/air mixture through the pipes to remove the iron and manganese layer and any other organic debris that attaches to pipewalls. This is then flushed out of the pipe network at scour valves and released into the ground and back to nature from where it came.