Regional Water Resources Plan - North West
Regional Water Resources Plan - North West
The development of the Regional Water Resources Plan North West (RWRP-NW) will allow Uisce Éireann for the first time to review water supply needs collectively for the entire North West region and across the spectrum of risk including quality, quantity, reliability, and sustainability. It allows us to consider local options to resolve these needs and larger Regional Options that can address needs across multiple supplies.
As part of the RWRP-NW Uisce Éireann reviewed the water supply needs across 119 water resource zones and identified options to address any additional requirements. The plan allows us to consider local options that can resolve needs within individual supplies and regional options that can address needs across multiple supplies.
The RWRP-NW has now been adopted, accompanied by a Strategic Environmental Assessment Statement and an Appropriate Assessment Determination. A Consultation Report summarising feedback received during the public consultation has also been published.
The outcome of the RWRP-NW includes:
- Merging supply systems within the region to form 15 larger interconnected Water Resource Zones, reducing the number of Water Resource Zones in the North West Region from 119 to 81.
- Upgrading 104 existing water treatment plants to reduce water quality risks across all WRZs.
- Increasing the capacity of 45 (of the remaining 104) WTPs to address the current supply deficit and to meet forecast growth.
- Interconnecting supplies via 692 kilometres of trunk mains.
- Development of 10 new water treatment plants.
- Eventual decommissioning of 38 water treatment plants.
- Reducing leakage to 23% of regional demand through pressure management, active leakage control, and targeted asset replacement.
Regional Water Resources Plan - North West
Regional Water Resources Plan: North West
Regional Water Resources Plan: North West Table of Contents
- Section 1 Planning Context
- Section 2 North West Region
- Section 3 Regional Needs
- Section 4 Current Status of Infrastructure
- Section 5 Solutions - Our Approach
- Section 6 Option Development
- Section 7 Preferred Approach - Study Area
- Section 8 Regional Preferred Approach
- Section 9 Ongoing Monitoring, Mitigation and Evolution
- Section 10 Conclusions
North West Region
The Region covers approximately 26,900 square kilometres (representing about 40% of the Republic of Ireland) and extends from the Shannon Estuary on the Southern boundary of County Clare to County Donegal, which borders Northern Ireland. The area also includes eight islands off the coast of Ireland, namely Inishmore, Inishmean, Inishere, Inisboffin, Inishturk, Clare Island, Achill Island and Arranmore Island. The region is supported by a strong network of key towns that provide secure employment and economic growth potential. Uisce Éireann supplies around 369 million litres of water per day to a population of 732,700 people and 74,137 businesses in the North West region. This represents more than 21% of Uisce Éireann's total supply nationally.
Find your townland
A list of the cities, towns, villages, and townlands covered by this Regional plan is available in the links below. The information provided in the townlands, towns and settlement lists that are included in the Regional Water Resources Plan North West are sourced from Ordnance Survey Ireland.
Study Area Technical Reports
To deliver the draft RWRP-NW, we subdivided the region into smaller units to enable us to manage the process of identifying potential water supply solutions (options) and the selection of our Preferred Approaches to resolve our water supply and water quality deficits. These smaller units are referred to as Study Areas.
A detailed Technical Report is provided for each Study Area describing the solution types at Study Area level and providing a summary of the detailed Option and Approach Development process and resulting outcomes for each Study Area.
The Study Area technical reports are provided as appendices to the draft RWRP-NW document.
The North West Region comprises seven Study Areas as shown in the image below.
Regional Water Resources Plan North West Webinar Recording
If you're not able to attend any of the above public webinars, check out the pre-recording of the presentation below to give you an overview of the draft plan.
