Marvel of Cleaning Water on display at Silent Valley

17 February 2023 13:52

Silent Valley was the magnificent backdrop for the ‘Marvel of Cleaning Water’ event held by NI Water staff to mark the NI Science Festival.

Staff from all areas of the business - scientists, environmentalists and apprentices– were on hand to showcase the many hidden elements that go into cleaning water. 

Anna Killen, NI Water’s Outreach and Learning Officer commented, “The NI Science Festival is aimed at celebrating the science of you, the universe and everything in between. Here at NI Water, we wanted to wow our customers with the science behind cleaning water and the importance of infrastructure in bringing clean, safe drinking water to the tap.  We were delighted so many visitors came along to enjoy live demonstrations explaining the ‘The Marvel of Cleaning Water’.

Anna continues, “The Mourne Wall is 100 years old, so we were delighted to showcase the importance of modern science against a backdrop of the importance of engineering and science a hundred years ago, when planning began to provide a reservoir in the Mountains of Mourne. 

ENDS

• Work on the wall commenced in 1904 and took 18-years to complete, providing a boundary for the 9,000-acre water catchment area that supplies the Silent Valley and Ben Crom reservoirs. Major repairs, over two years, have been completed which involved flying repair stones from local quarries by helicopter and rolling them into place using age-old methods.

• We are now using even more water than ever, and it is amazing to think that on an average day, each person uses around 170 litres.  NI Water clean over 570 million litres of water a day but with climate change and increasing usage, now is the time to really think about how we can respect and conserve the water we use every day and how we are leaving the planet for the next 100-years.