Athlone café 'had to close for two months in recent years' due to water cuts

Work on a temporary increase to the capacity of Athlone's water treatment plant got underway recently, but for the proprietor of one local café the improvements aren't coming quickly enough.

Ken Robinson of Kafe U, located on the Dublin Road opposite AIT, calculated that he's had to close his cafe for a combined total of two months, in the last five years, as a direct result of water outages.

The latest enforced closure due to a sudden lack of water occurred on Tuesday of last week, and the business then had to cope with a further outage last Thursday.

These were among several local water supply disruptions in the last week, most of which were caused by watermain bursts, according to Irish Water.

In Kafe U's case, the water went just before lunchtime on Tuesday, August 4, and forced the business to close. According to Irish Water, this was due to a burst water main which disrupted supply to the Willow Park housing estate and surrounding areas.

On Thursday, the water at Kafe U went again - this time as a result of "leak detection works" in the Dublin Road area. Ken (pictured above) said that, not for the first time, he received no advance notice of the outage.

"It's ridiculous. I tried to contact the council, and they said it's Irish Water's problem. Then when you do ring Irish Water, they give you a reference number and tell you to call back in a few hours. They don't care," he said.

Late on Thursday, a pipe burst in Garrycastle caused "localised flooding" and a water outage for many areas of east Athlone for much of Friday. Ken said his business was able to manage on Friday because its water supply was low in pressure but wasn't shut off completely.

"The pressure has gone down a lot in the last couple of days," he told the Westmeath Independent this week. "Athlone seems to be the worst for these issues, for some reason, especially on the Westmeath side.

"I hope (Irish Water) do something about it, but I'm not going to hold my breath. As I've said before, if I have to keep closing then I'm going to be out of business."

Separately, Moate, Ballymore, and surrounding areas were affected by a water outage during the day on Friday, which resulted from a burst watermain and didn't see water supplies return until that evening.

And another water disruption in the vicinity of Bastion Quay, Athlone, occurred on Friday and lasted into the weekend.

Local councillor Frankie Keena recently said he had received confirmation from Irish Water that work was now underway on a temporary upgrade of the treatment plant, at Marine View, in order to increase the amount of water available for output by two thousand megalitres per day.

"Thankfully, with the lifting of (Covid-19) restrictions, temporary work has now begun on site which, on completion, will cater for Athlone's current and future water demand needs over the next number of years," said Cllr Keena.

He said the work at the plant, coupled with the detection and resolution of a number of major leaks in Athlone's water system in recent times, would bring relief for affected residents and businesses.

"It was just unacceptable the level of restrictions and outages they've had to endure over the last couple of years," he commented.