Water Poisoning in Monaghan

Cavan/Monaghan Water Poisoning

Blisters and open sores on the mouth and tongue. Stomach cramps and diarrhoea. Flaking skin. Just some of the conditions endured by hundreds who drank contaminated water in Cavan and Monaghan in March and April.

The RTÉ Radio Investigative Unit has established that their drinking  water was contaminated with a toxic and caustic chemical - Phenol. The phenol was originally an unwanted by-product from the mining industry.

Listen to the report

From mining industry to drinking water!
In Cork a company called Cognis manufacture a chemical that is used to extract copper from copper ore. There is an unwanted by-product in this manufacturing process . it is an aluminium chloride solution. Aluminium Chloride can be used as a Coagulant to extract solid matter from water. The product Cognis was producing had to be filtered to remove phenol.

Cognis sell their Aluminium Chloride to the environmental solutions company just down the road from them in Ringaskiddy called Enva. They say that they sell it to Enva with the proviso that it is not to be used in the treatment of drinking water . only the treatment of waste water (sewage).

 
Cognis Cork: Sold tainted
product for about €1 a ton

Enva sell aluminiumchloride for the treatment of waste water. However the technical data sheet they supplied with their product, which the Radio Investigative Unit has seen, said that it was suitable for the treatment of drinking water. Aluminium chloride sold to the operators of the group water schemes in Cavan and Monaghan by Enva was tainted with Phenol.

Enva: Sold the product
on for €173 a ton

We found the tainted aluminium chloride that was shipped to Cavan and Monaghan. I took samples and brought them to the Chemistry department in UCD where the PhD students ran them through a mass spectrometer. This product which should have been pure aluminium chloride contained all sorts of impurities from acetic acid to aromatic compounds and lots of phenol. One of the 1000 litre drum I examined contained as much as 12 litres of phenol.

Analysis found 12 litres
of phenol in each container

Price seems to be the key thing here. Cognis won't tell us exactly how much they sell to Enva for. But I understand from industry insiders that it's for a pittance .. Around about a euro a tonne. Enva then sold it on for about €170. A 1700% mark up. But that is still about half of what everybody else is selling it for.

Ultimately the end user, Veolia, (who run the group water schemes) has a duty of care which they didn't meet. The National Standards Authority told me that Veolia are supposed to ensure that the chemicals added to the water are certified under European guidelines, this chemical wasn't.

Veolia: Didn't follow
EU guidelines

Nobody to blame
Cognis say they sold Enva this product on the clear understanding that it was not to be used for the treatment of drinking water. Their annual report from 2004 appears to say precisely the opposite:

Enva say they are cooperating with a multi-agency investigation and believe they have behaved appropriately at all times. They say this product was never sold for use in the treatment of drinking water. Again the information sheet they supplied with their product appears to say precisely the opposite.

Veolia were the company who ultimately put the tainted Aluminium Chloride into the water in Cavan and Monaghan. They are the largest Water Services Provider in the world. They have been in this business for over 100 years.

Veolia: Providing water services
all around the globe

They knew that the product they were adding to the water was not certified under EU guidelines. Presumably they were also aware that the product they were purchasing was a third cheaper than the properly certified product. In response to our investigation they say that the guidelines for certified products were only guidelines and not statutory requirements. However they are now using properly certified products.

Local Anger
Understandably for the 10,000 people whose water was poisoned with Phenol their confidence in the quality of what comes out of their taps is shaken. They don't understand why it took at least three weeks from when the problem was first noticed to when a ban was put in place. They are mystified as to why their county councils would sign a twenty year contract with Veolia when the company was not properly certified. But most of all they are worried about what had been going into the water for the two years that Veolia was supplying them water before this problem occurred.

Listen to the Managing Director of Veolia 

Listen to the concerns of locals.
 

Where has all the Phenol gone?

What next?
The environment minister has expressed his grave concern about what happened in Cavan and Monaghan. An alphabet soup of government agencies are now looking into every aspect of this case. The HSE, The HSA, The NSAI, The EPA and the Local Authorities. The Radio Investigative Unit will continue to keep an eye on their work.