Treatment Plant and Network

• Given the peaty soils present throughout much of the catchment, there is risk of pH and colour issues within the raw water. Further details with regards to recommendations made on the basis of catchment land use in combination with assessments of water quality data (Section 6.0) are given in Section 7.0.

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• Killeen Water Treatment Plant began production in 2009.

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• Raw water flows down from Lough Cumnel through 6 km of pipe through 1) drum filters where heavier dirt is removed.

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• From the drum filters water flows into an underground chamber and from there it is pumped into the raw water tank at the side of the treatment plant. The water at this point has been roughly cleaned and is still called raw ‘untreated’ water.

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• Inside the Treatment Plant water flows through the 2) hydac pre-filter, where coarse particles that come from the lake are removed. It has 6 small mesh covered screen filters inside and when they clog up with dirt and particles the filter automatically backwashes to clean the scree filters.

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• Water moves on through the 3) multi-media filters. These filters remove the finer dirt particles in the water. A layer of anthracite overlies 2 layers of sand, which overlies one layer of gravel. Together these layers are termed  ‘media’. The dirt in the water sticks to the media. These filters are backwashed daily to remove all this dirt that has stuck to the media.

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• Water flows through a basket filter which helps to remove any particles that have escaped the multi-media filters which could damage the membrane filters.

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• The membrane filters are the final step in cleaning the water. These filters are very specialised because they can remove colour, taste, smell and most importantly bacteria or ‘bugs’ which can be present in raw water. E.g. Cryptosporidium, a small microscopic bacteria which can make people very ill.