More than 50 people are ill in Ireland after a failure at a treatment plant led to contaminated water being released to the public.
The Health and Service Executive (HSE) is investigating an outbreak in the town of Gorey in North Wexford. There have been 52 confirmed illnesses linked to the incident, including cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), with a number of hospitalizations.
At Gorey water treatment plant in County Wexford, there was a power outage and a chlorine pump failure resulting in water leaving the plant and entering the public supply without the appropriate level of disinfection for five days beginning Aug. 19. This incident was not reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and HSE until Aug. 26.
Authorities said the delay in reporting prevented a timely risk assessment of the impact on drinking water quality and time to allow measures that could have protected public health.
EPA conducted two audits at Gorey water treatment plant on Sept. 7 and 16 to investigate the incident and to identify what corrective actions needed to be taken.
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