Looking Back: 'Pump' picture brings back Calverstown memories
There's been a lot of interest in what the whole matter was about, so courtesy of Ger Whelan, whose mother Cathleen was the lady in the picture, I'm republishing it verbatim below.
Even then, I have to say, I was able to tell the community story pretty well.
SUNDAY WORLD, APRIL 29TH, 1979:
PUMPED AND STUMPED!
THE VILLAGERS FIGHTING TO GET THEIR WATER ON TAP ... AND IT'S ONLY A MILE AWAY FROM THEIR HOMES!
by Brian Byrne.
Kildare County Council is in hot water with 60 families in the little hamlet of Calverstown — or would be if the villagers had a proper water supply.
Because four years after their plans for a Group Water Scheme were approved in principle by the Department of Local Government (now the Department of the Environment), the residents of Calverstown still haven't got a drop coming from their taps.
Tempers are stretched to the limit and there'll be a public protest meeting tomorrow night in the local Ballyshannon hall.
There's water on tap to within a mile from the village on every one of the four approach roads.
And the first house on the proposed scheme is within 400 yards of an underground reservoir at Old Kilcullen which holds five million gallons of water.
Yet Mrs Cathleen Whelan has to fetch buckets of water every day from the village pump half a mile from her home.
And Billy Haslam has had a bathroom built for the last 12 months but has no water on tap, while local farmer Ned Cranny has to draw 200 gallons of water a day during the summer in his van.
"I put it in barrels and anything else that will hold it," he says.
The Calverstown people seem to be caught in the middle of a communications breakdown between Kildare Co Council and the Department of the Environment, with each side blaming the other for the delay.
As far back as 1967, families in the scattered townland paid £25 per house to take part in a proposed water scheme.
But the plan was abandoned because of insufficient pressure on the water mains between Poulaphuca and Newbridge.
The householders' money was refunded.
Then in 1974, with the completion of the nearby Old Kilcullen underground reservoir, the dry householders again had a group water plan drawn up by a local engineer.
This plan was approved in principle by the Department in June of 1975, and sent back to Kildare Co Council for a detailed report.
In the meantime, a committee set about collecting money for the scheme from the families involved. The cost this time ranged from £150 for a private House to £250 for a farm connection. But there was no move by the Council to provide water.
The committee furnished a complete list of costings to the Council in February of 1978. But all through the summer there was nothing further heard on the matter.
Then work was started on the first batch of 15 houses of a proposed 54-house council estate in the village.
The residents of Calverstown got worried when they saw the Council had dug a well and erected a pumphouse to provide water for those houses.
Their queries were answered by a letter from Kildare Co Council last November, which assured them that the well and pumphouse were only temporary structures and the new houses would eventually be connected to the group scheme.
The letter also said that there had been a problem concerning the size of the mains for the scheme but that this had been resolved, and a full report was being forwarded to the Department of the Environment.
"But if they want to use well water in the new houses they'll have to change the plumbing," says Liam O'Connor, a committee member of the group scheme.
"The hot water systems they've installed are only suitable for soft water, and the hard water from the well will choke them with lime."
By February of this year, there was still no news, and a query to the Department brought the response that they were still waiting for the report from Kildare Co Council.
Since then there has been no communication from either body.
So the residents are having their public meeting to decide what should be done.
"We're holding the meeting to expose the injustice of the long delay," says Sam Sloan, a local schoolteacher and chairman of the scheme.
"And we want all the residents to voice their opinion, because there are local elections coming up."
The long delay is also going to mean an increase in costs because the price of piping along has doubled since the scheme was designed.
"It's going to be very embarrassing going back to people, many of them who have paid in full, to ask them to pay another £100 to be connected," says Sam.
Mr Christopher Marshall of the County Council's Waterworks department said that the scheme passed through his office on July 26, 1977 marked 'approved' by the Council.
"My understanding of it is that it is still with the Department of the Environment awaiting approval," he said. The matter was being dealt with by the assistant Chief County Engineer, Peter Clarke.
Mr Clarke was not available for comment.
Picture captions:
Mrs Cathleen Whelan has to carry buckets half a mile to get water from the village pump.
Sam Sloan and Liam O'Connor in front of the pump house Kildare County Council built to supply 15 houses.
NOTE
The village eventually got its group water scheme in place in late 1981.
Ger Whelan, who was also involved with the water scheme committee at the time, says his mother 'got a lot of ribbing' over being a 'Page 5 Girl' in the Sunday World. "But she really enjoyed it," he told me today.
She passed away some years ago, and she always had a saying that 'I've hidden something too well from myself'. "I'm kind of like that myself, but when I went to try and find the paper yesterday, it was in the first place I looked. I think she might have been directing me to it."
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