Somethought. Something. Someone

For the first time on record temperatures in Ireland have hit 30 degrees in May, June and July of the same year. Europe is experiencing its worst heatwave on record (according to researchers) and we all know that in Ireland, compared to the temperatures across France, Spain and other EU countries we have gotten off lightly. Although the summer’s not over yet. The wildfire’s burning across Tipperary, Wicklow and other parts of the country right now are terrifying for those communities and obviously not something Ireland is used to having to deal with. I have such huge respect for the families, farmers and emergency services working to control those blazes.

In response, as of today, all household in Ireland are under a hosepipe ban for at least the next five weeks. The crudely imposed water restrictions have sparked a totally fair fight about data centres, their water consumption and whether it's right that households get watched and restricted while this new industry doesn't. That's a very real conversation and one worth having, and almost every other channel you tune into this week will be giving their opinion and research on that.

I want to talk to you about something else. Because I believe my role, and what I want to use my platform for, is to remind us of the power we do have, not the power we don't. I want us to remember the ways we can create change, not dwell on the ways we feel helpless. I believe the way to make real national change starts with each individual feeling empowered to make a difference — in their own world first, and as their circle of concern is able to expand, then their community, then their country, then the world. If you think I'm wasting my time on that, I’m ok with that. I have a very strong conviction, and I'm stubborn about it.

So here’s my take. Uisce Éireann took charge of the country's water network in 2014, inheriting it from 34 local authorities that had run it in different ways for decades before. Some of what they took on is older than anyone alive today. Pipes in parts of Dublin and Cork are still Victorian-era. Their own published report, a preliminary business case for the Water Supply Project Eastern and Midlands Region published in December 2023, says leakage was 49% the year they took over, is down to around a third now, and the region could still be short by over a third of what it needs by 2044 if nothing changes. All this driven by population growth, drier summers, and yes, data centres too, even though that last one isn't actually in their report. I added it myself because it is a factor, but it’s not the only factor. 

This report seems candid and humble to me. Produced by the organisation that certainly has the most access to information about our water systems, and I see no reason not to take the information presented at face value.

But here's the part that actually matters: The fact that it rained all winter, even the fact that it was raining and flooding in areas just three months ago, does not ensure that water is available now, when we need it. The Greater Dublin Area gets about 85% of its water from a single source, the River Liffey, drawn out at two treatment plants and supplying 1.7 million people. All that rain that falls throughout the year, the majority of it runs via the Liffey, and out to sea within days. Our water security is not measured by how much rain falls. It is about how much we can actually store, treat and distribute water when it’s demanded. A country with historically reliable rainfall never needed big reserves, because they're constantly being topped up. This is the storage part. A country with regular rainfall is not used to everyone it serves needing to water their lawns, their gardens and their paddling pools all at the same time - due to four weeks of sustained gorgeous weather. The hot weather also means that anything that uses water to cool it - like a data centre - is going to consume proportionally more water too. This is the demand part. That particular treatment plant can deliver somewhere around 500 million litres of water per day for those 1.7million people. On one particular incredibly hot day the demand on that treatment plant was up to 670 million litres. That is an enormous, unprecedented demand increase on a system that is used to it raining most weeks.

So what’s my take-away? Do I want clear regulation and enforcement on how big tech is operating and using resources in Ireland? Absolutely. Do I want Uisce Éireann to fix the leaks and build bigger reservoirs and better treatment plants? Of course I do. Do I think Uisce Éireann and the media could have presented this dilemma, that we are all ultimately facing, in a way that informed, educated, and empowered people to support their communities and choose to reduce their water usage rather than suggesting neighbours should be policing one another and threatening each other with fines. Yep.

But the thing I feel most out of all of this is that it makes me want more independence over my own water supply for my family. Less dependent on one pipe, one reservoir or one company's five-year plan. That's the shift I actually want people to take from this. Not waiting on someone else to fix it for you and then continuing to be solely dependent on them again next summer. Asking what you could do to have more agency yourself.

I grew up in water scarcity. Seven years of drought where I'm from, in Australia. Hosepipe bans weren't a month-long summer story, they were just how things were. Three-minute showers and a timer on the bathroom wall, everyone in the house taking turns. And yes we also had a hotline for reporting your neighbour too. Deadly bushfires were an all too regular occurrence.

The lesson living in drought teaches you isn't about the restrictions. It's about building resilience before you need it. A water tank wasn't a luxury item there, it was just part of a house. In many areas, it was illegal NOT to have a water tank. Schools were taken on a field trip 3 hours away to Warragamba Dam so we could understand where our water came from and that it was a finite resource. Most of us let our cars get dusty, other used carwashes that recycled the water. Scarcity makes us innovate. Scarcity forces us stop being wasteful. 

Places that have lived with scarcity longer than us have already developed that muscle at a national scale. Perth put in permanent water-restriction levels and a desalination plant after a drought that never really ended. Windhoek, in Namibia, has treated its own wastewater and sent it straight back into the drinking supply for decades, nobody there blinks at it anymore. It's just how things work.

Once I left Australia I ended up spending seven years of my life as a foreman with a construction company called Earthship Biotecture, pioneered by Michael Reynolds, building off-grid homes where independence from the water system wasn't an afterthought, it was the whole design. Rain off the roof was caught and stored. That water ran to the kitchen, the shower, the basins. What came out the other end as greywater didn't just go down a drain, it went into an indoor vegetable planter bed, lined underneath so nothing was lost, growing food while it filtered through. Whatever the plants didn't use got held there and used again to flush the toilets. One drop of rain doing four jobs before it was finished.

We've had so much rain here in Ireland, for so long, that most of us have never had to ask where our own water comes from, what it costs to make it drinkable, or what happens the day it runs short. That's not a failure. It's just what happens when you've never had to build that independence. A summer of water drama like this one is our signal to start asking questions and even start considering solutions.

Here's the one thing worth doing this week, if any of this landed: go find out where your own tap water actually comes from. The reservoir, the group scheme, the borehole. Most of us genuinely don't know, and it's a five-minute search that changes how you see every tap in the house. There are incredibly hard working group schemes and organisations all over the country making sure that water is reaching every household. Our home is on a group water scheme along with about two hundred other households, and we also collect our own rainwater. 

I went deep and detailed on all of this in my new book Heat Shelter Water Food. Catchment, filtration, what's actually realistic to build at home, no rural acre required. To help build knowledge. To help build habits.

And yes, our rain will come back, hopefully soon. Maybe we’ll have a little more tolerance for it when it does. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

Big love,

Harrison

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