Minister: Water-boosting ‘projects coming’

As water outages continue, especially in the north of the island, Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources Minister Charles Griffith on Wednesday gave an assurance that several projects are on the way to address the shortages.

Speaking on the 2021/2022 Estimates, Griffith said: “Water is life and I want to share that the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) is actively pursuing goals that will rectify all of the current issues that we are having across this country. I am intimately involved with the process and I am intimately aware of the challenges that we are having islandwide.

“The project that is happening in the eastern corner at Vineyard, but that is one of maybe several projects that we will be looking to implement in short time. There are plans in train to rectify the water situation that is currently happening in the north through desalination plants and there are also plans to rectify part of the problem that is happening in the constituency of St Joseph through the upgrade of the St Stephen’s to Lodge Hill initiative. We have several water augmentation projects that will be rolled out in short time so you may not be seeing… but I want to assure you that the BWA is actively looking to rectify all of the issues.

“Are we there yet? Of course not, but the overarching goal of the BWA is to ensure that our over 100,000 customers on a daily basis can have a constant supply of water.”

BWA General Manager Keithroy Halliday revealed that two desalination plants are being built at a cost of just over $6 million to specifically address the longstanding water outages affecting residents in St Lucy and St Peter.

“The desalination plants that I think Minister Griffith would have referred to as part of solutions for dealing with the challenges we have had in the north will be for two temporary desalination plants, one of which will cost roughly $2 million to install and the other which will cost $4.6 million to install,” he noted. (RB)