The island’s utility companies have promised Barbadians that their systems remain intact and functioning as designed, in light of the ashfall from multiple eruptions of St Vincent’s La Soufrière volcano.
Managing Director of Barbados Light and Power, Roger Blackman, and the Barbados Water Authority’s (BWA) General Manager, Keithroy Halliday, both joined Sunday’s emergency press briefing, to assure Barbadians that their companies’ systems are still working, and have not been affected as of now.
Though Blackman noted that the properties of volcanic ash are known to be conductive to electricity and can at times cause sparks around power lines, these lines are designed by nature to carry much higher loads than they currently do, as a safety precaution in case of static interferences.
“Our insolation levels are designed for higher voltages than we operate at, so there is a level of insolation already built into the design. Additionally, most of our substations, almost all of them, are indoor designs, which is somewhat unique in the Caribbean. It was done that way for resilience, and that provides us with a level of protection as well compared to an outdoor design, which is pretty common elsewhere,” he said.
Blackman stressed however, that the company was in the process of developing several redundancies in the event that a situation arises.
“We do have a plan over the next few days to access and wash down equipment, and do the relevant inspections over the next few days. You would have heard the Prime Minister [Mia Mottley] and others say that you can’t wait for the ash to build up, that you have to deal with it in increments or phases,” he added.
Meanwhile, Halliday sought to quash rumours and online speculation about the possible contamination of the island’s water supply, stressing that the water system on the island is a closed one, and cannot be impacted in such a way from falling ash.
“The way in which our system works, we have a very natural filtering system that works very well for Barbados. The ground cover or the soil cover actually retards most pollutants from reaching our aquifers – the filtration system on its own works very well.
“We want to assure Barbadians, we have gone through this before, we know what to expect, and therefore would not need to have any real concerns about our aquifers being infiltrated,” Halliday said.
Outside of the ashfall, Halliday also said the BWA constantly does random testing of the island’s water supply, so in the event that any compromise occurs, they would become aware well ahead of time before consumers are affected.
“The other thing that we need to stress, is that we do serious water quality tests. While the WHO (World Health Organization) asks us to do about 50, we do up to 200 such quality tests on average a month. So at all times, we are making sure that our water quality is at where it should be.” (SB)
