Source to Tap

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The Source to Tap (StT) project is a cross border partnership comprising NI Water, Irish Water (IW), Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Ulster University (UU) , The Rivers Trust (TRT) and East Border Region Ltd. (EBR), working collaboratively to explore sustainable, cost effective measures to reduce pollution in shared catchments, and to secure safe drinking water sources. The main aim of the project is to deliver a Sustainable Catchment Area Plan (SCAMP) for the Erne and Derg cross border catchments. This will help to secure safe drinking water sources and it will contribute to improvements in cross border raw water quality. The SCAMP will supplement existing Water Framework Directive’s (WFD) programme of measures, contributing to WFD objectives, including improvement of water body classifications. It will contribute to the Drinking Water Directive (DWD) objective of reducing risks and ensuring safe drinking water. Regulatory compliance has been threatened at a number of NI Water and IW Water Treatment Works (WTWs) in these shared catchments in relation to colour, turbidity, and the pesticide MCPA. StT will attempt to address these issues through sustainable catchment based solutions to ensure DWD compliance, whilst reducing treatment costs and contributing to improved WFD status. The primary aim of this project is to deliver sustainable solutions to pollution of drinking water sources via a SCAMP. Project partners, drawing on the experience of a number of organisations, have designed the project to improve raw water quality in cross border catchments. Involvement of the local community to deliver project objectives will result in behavioural change, and upskilling community members in river monitoring will ensure the future legacy of project outputs and long-trerm sustainability benefits. Water quality data will be collected throughout the project. Realisation of project impact on behavioural change will be assessed post implementation.

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