Irish Water Delegation to Visit New Zealand

A small group from Irish Water will be visiting New Zealand in September/October this year. Irish Water is the national water utility charged with responsibility for provision of water and wastewater services in Ireland. They commenced operations in 2014 and were set up to amalgamate the water and wastewater functions of 31 Local Authorities into a single semi-state utility.

They have expressed an interest in making contact with practitioners in New Zealand.

They will be attending Conference in September, and hopefully speaking, but also wish to make contacts with people in the industry in New Zealand during their visit who might be able to facilitate specific discussions/site visits. They would hope to spend just over a week in New Zealand.

Appended is a list of key activity areas that are of particular interest and where they are developing and implementing significant changes.

Key areas of activity that they are presently working on are:

1. Water Conservation, leakage management and network rehabilitation – application of recently developed technologies to network management.
2. Energy Efficiency challenges- low energy solutions, renewables and energy recovery.
3. Developing sustainable wastewater treatment solutions for smaller communities and variable discharge consents.
4. Biosolids- Resource Recovery and Reuse in Agriculture and Forestry and other areas.
5. Sewer Network Management and Rehabilitation
6. Emerging contaminants
7. Understanding of the impact of large scale Agriculture on water resources and services
8. Source control of wastewater discharges
9. Asset management approaches

Since Water NZ is assisting Irish Water with their visit, the obvious opportunity is for Water NZ to facilitate meetings in Auckland, Wellington and at conference in Hamilton.

If you would like to meet with them during their time in NZ please let me know by 12 July. ceo@waternz.org.nz