Farmers and parents of school children were just some of the people inconvenienced with no water this week. And residents in the Knocks, Lisnaskea got reconnected to a water supply as late as yesterday (Wednesday) morning.

4,000 homes and businesses across Fermanagh and Tyrone were affected by water shortages on Sunday night and on Monday after a pump at the Killyhevlin treatment plant broke down. NI Water staff distributed 14,400 litres of bottled water this week from a distribution point at Knockmore Road, Derrygonnelly. Some water was hand delivered to vulnerable customers. Meanwhile politicians Arlene Foster, Keith Elliott and Donald Crawford distributed water around the Lisbellaw area.

Locally, Derrygonnelly, Lisbellaw, Tempo, Florencecourt, Maguiresbridge, Brookeborough, Lisnaskea, Rosslea, Fivemiletown and Clogher all suffered from water shortages.

Six primary schools, Lisbellaw PS; Tattygar PS; St. Mary’s Tempo; Tempo PS; Florencecourt PS and Derrygonnelly PS were forced to close on Monday due to the water supply disruption.

Lisbellaw PS and nursery has 215 pupils. Principal Ingrid Logan explained: “It was disruptive because none of our pupils could come into school because the lavatories couldn’t be used, there was no water for making the children’s dinners so the kitchen had to close and no water to prepare snacks in the nursery and clean up afterwards.” She adds: “Being a parent and a granny, I can just imagine the disruption caused to parents in terms of getting childcare arranged at short notice.” Young Farmers’ Clubs of Ulster Vice President, and County Chairman, Andrew Little, from Tempo, was forced to stop feeding his 80 beef cattle but had to ensure his 80 dairy cattle got water. This meant trekking to a neighbouring farmer’s well and transporting the water back to his herd.

“It would have been useful if they had told us in advance,” the busy farmer stated. “It wasn’t sensible, the carry on they were at.” His water was off from 5.30pm on Sunday until 2pm on Monday. When the supply returned, it was a murky, brown colour.

Andrew is concerned that the brown water could affect the quality of the milk produced, an added concern at a time when milk prices are decreasing.

“The colour of the water wouldn’t have helped the cleanliness of the milking parlour. The parlour has to be cleaned out twice a day and you’re not meant to clean it with water that you wouldn’t drink yourself. I wouldn’t like to have been drinking that water,” Andrew commented.

Due to ongoing industrial action over pensions, NI Water staff are working to rule, therefore, are not doing out of hours work or overtime work.

Six staff are employed in the Killyhevlin Treatment Works and the Enniskillen Waste Treatment Works.

An NI Water spokesman told The impartial Reporter: “In general, NI Water treatment plants are automated and there is no requirement to be manned full time. However, from time to time, there may be a requirement for manual intervention and unfortunately, if this was to happen out of hours (4pm to 8am), NI Water will have limited resources available to deal with it.” Over Christmas, staff had operated ‘goodwill’ emergency cover to avoid water shortages during the festive period. That has now ended.

The Water Group of Trade Unions, including UNITE, NIPSA and GMB has called for the Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy to intervene “to avoid consequences of prolonged industrial action.” The Minister has not backed down, stating: “Obviously the pensions decision was taken at Executive level, it’s already been implemented and applied to other public sector workers.

“I’ve explained that in detail to the trade unions when I met them in advance of Christmas.

“I regret - and it’s disappointing - that there’s been an escalation of the industrial action during efforts to find a solution.” The NI Water spokesman said, on Tuesday, that all local premises had had their water supply restored. He stated: “Unfortunately, with 26,000kms of watermains, 15,000kms of sewers and literally thousands of pumping stations and treatment works to monitor it was virtually inevitable there will be interruptions to services to our customers.

“NI Water remains on high alert with a Major Incident regime in place and we are committed to continued engagement with Trade Unions in an effort to resolve this dispute. The company would stress once more the key demand that pension reform be delayed is not within its gift to provide. It believes dialogue rather than causing disruption represents the best way forward.” A local councillor has alleged that the Management at NI Water failed to properly advise the people of Fermanagh about the issues they knew would arise from the pump failure at the Killyhevlin plant.

"This meant that when the reservoirs dried up people would undoubtedly be left without flowing water in their homes at the weekend for a considerable period of time. Had people been made aware, in this instance they could have been better prepared rather than relying on the very late and scant response of a few palettes of water left at a distribution point in the Derrygonnelly area". "Many families complained of the dire straits they were in dealing with sick children, housebound elderly, schools forced to close along with the farmers who were completely stranded with no water for their animals for a number of days. NI Water gave assurances that the estimated restoration time would be 8pm on Sunday night, this did not happen until 6pm on Monday all of which is a large variance which must be addressed to be avoided in future." Councillor Swift has demanded an immediate review through Fermanagh District Council of the Silver Stakeholder Engagement Team. "The first question on the top of the list is who exactly were they engaging with? We aim to ensure that NI Water does not fail us in future," she said.

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