The project to supply water to water-starved central and eastern Barbados has been up and running for the past two weeks, Minister of Water Resources Charles Griffith has revealed, declaring persistent water shortages there over.
Griffith, MP for St John, made the announcement Sunday during his constituency’s branch meeting of the Barbados Labour Party.
The water augmentation project pipes water from the Barbados Water Authority’s Vineyard, St. Philip reservoir to its Bowmanston/Golden Ridge system.
Griffith told the party faithful: “On the 14th of this month, we went live in terms of transferring water from Groves to Golden Ridge via the Vineyard to Mount Pleasant connection.
“I know that is great relief not only for the constituents of St. John but the entire eastern corridor that was impacted for a number of years as it relates to water outages.
“I am pleased to announce that Golden Ridge is now full at 13 feet of water. What we are doing is pumping 500, 000 gallons of water in the initial systems from Groves to Golden Ridge.
“The capacity that we will take from the wells at Groves is 3 million gallons per day, [but] we are going with half a million at this point in time because we do not want to overwhelm the system, so there will be a gradual ramping up of that supply to reach the maximum capacity.
“All that is left for us to do is some landscaping at the locations of Vineyard and Mount Pleasant, and that would be the closure of that initiative.”
With the project’s completion, Griffith declared that the usual water woes for residents of St. John, St. Joseph, St. Andrew and St.
Thomas should now be a thing of the past, as all systems associated with the new pumping network are currently functioning well.
In addition to several other projects around the island being undertaken to alleviate water outages, the BWA has also taken steps to increase maintenance work at their pumping stations around the island, to ensure the water supply is not adversely impacted as it was earlier this year, the water resources minister said.
This maintenance work includes replacing outdated pipes and systems and installing generators to provide continuous power in the event of a widespread power outage, he added.
“We are trying to ensure that sometime in the future, that every single location [has] a backup generator just in case we have a major impact and there is no electricity. We will have generators functioning at every single location, and there will be continuous supply of water,” Griffith said. (SB)
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