ELEUTHERA, BAHAMAS — Water and Sewerage Corporation (W&SC) officials and members of parliament for Eleuthera traveled to the island yesterday, where residents have been experiencing water outages over the past few months.
W&SC Acting General Manager, Robert Deal said that the corporation has plans to increase the storage at the water plant to mitigate the problem.
The Water and Sewerage Corporation Executive explained that in addition to the storage, they are taking several steps to address the problem that has left a number of their customers with low water pressure.
“Essentially, we have been challenged here in terms of being able to produce water on a consistent, reliable basis, part of that is because of challenges with the maintenance of the plant,” Deal said.
A meeting was held earlier this week with the Minister of Works officials, minister Alfred Sears, and representatives from Water and Sewerage and Aqua Design, the company that operates the water arrow plant on the island and sells water to Water and Sewerage.
“We have moved a portable desalination plant into position, and we’re working to get that hopefully connected and electrified in very short order to improve the production capacity at this facility, Deal continued, “Right now, the production capacity is around 450 to 500000 gallons per day, but that’s also the system demand and so what it means is that every drop of water we currently produce is being used by the system.
“We have to get the production capacity above that so that we will have spare capacity to build storage, but also to be able to take off some of the existing desalination trains, as we call them, take them offline one by one to also carry out the required maintenance works.”
As they received reports of some persons having low pressure, especially those living on higher ground. On Thursday, Deal said that the plant was up to normal production and that W&SC teams were canvasing the central Eleuthera area to ensure that all customers were getting water.
Deal said that as they continue discussions with Aqua Design about upgrades and maintenance they plan to work together with the company to install a portable desalination unit, with an aim to increase capacity.
“We have some old tanks and so we have limited storage on-site at this time, and what that means is that in the event of a water interruption at the plant, in very short order, the community is impacted if we can increase the storage on-site, what will happen is we will have water in storage.
“Our normal rule of thumb is that we should have 3 to 5 days of storage. Right now we have a little less than one day, and so that means that as soon as the plant goes off very slowly, the community is impacted, and once we are able to increase the storage capacity, it will mean that even if the plant has some sort of interruption, the community will not be impacted right away.”
Sylvannus Petty, Member of Parliament for North Eleuthera and Minister with responsibility for the Water and Sewerage Corporation said that he is well aware of the water shortage problem because he lives in Eleuthera, he added that they are not pleased with the results they have been getting from Aqua Design, however, there are legal blockades that limit their options for dealing with the matter.
“One of the challenges we had was that four days before the election it was a contract signed for ten years so that’s one of the legal challenges we have right now, but we have the minister who’s an astute lawyer, he’s dealing with it, the prime minister, also is looking into their contract, so we’re not pleased, I’m telling you, we’re not pleased.
“One of the issues that we have with them is they never have their technicians on the ground, they never have anyone at the plants, so it’s up to water and sewerage staff to check these plants and […] right now in North Eleuthera we are operating at 50 percent so this may happen in North Eleuthera any minute now, as a matter of fact, it’s not if it’s only when.”
Water and Sewerage officials in the meantime are encouraging residents to report water outages and low pressure so that the corporation can keep track of the situation and bring relief where possible.
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