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.