BWA delivers running water to customers in the east

After nearly two weeks without running water, service has been restored to residents of St Joseph and St Andrew.

In delivering the good news on Thursday, Director of Engineering at the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) Charles Leslie said the return of drinking water to the taps of those customers came as a result of the completion of the relaying of a damaged 10-inch transition main at Cattlewash, St Joseph.

Speaking to reporters at the site of the repaired main, Leslie recalled that initial efforts to fix the main proved futile due to the depth and condition of the soil.

“We are pleased to say that the transition main is now completed. That was put back into service yesterday. So customers further down in St Andrew and St Joseph are getting back their water; and all we are doing now is awaiting the results of the distribution main which just services the properties along the East Coast Road,” Leslie said.

“We are expecting back those results either today or tomorrow; and once those results are good, those mains would be put into service,” he stated.

Leslie told reporters that in addition to the relaying of the transition main, BWA personnel took the opportunity to install a distribution main along the Cattlewash section so they would not have to return to the area.

“We also laid a two-inch main on the seaside to avoid us having to install crossings if the seaside is developed in the future. So along with the repair, we were also able to do upgrades to the system. Within a couple of days, all of the residents in this area as well as the areas beyond have received the restoration of potable water back into their homes,” the senior water works department executive said.

Leslie also defended the authority’s level of communication with residents with regards to the mobile supply of water to the affected areas.

“We were taking calls from any of the communities and once we had those reports we were increasing the service to those particular areas. For instance, initially, we got complaints from the farmers at the agricultural station as well as the individual farmers; and as soon as we got the reports that they had issues, we then increased the tanker service to that area,” he stated.

“In some instances what we also did was to extend some of the other systems around. We had also some of the larger tankers going and filling the two tanks at Bissex that are normally fed off this line. But what we did was to reverse the flow, we dumped the water into the tanks and allow it to come back down into the community,” the head engineer explained.

Leslie said that while the work on the transition main was scheduled to take two weeks, the extended hours put in by the employees coupled with the type of equipment used, had cut that time to just over a week.

He said that the workers were now just tidying up by restoring properties and clearing debris that was dumped on the site.

The BWA’s leading engineer also pointed out that any type of construction or repair work on that side of the soil is always challenging due to the instability of the land in addition to the fact that the sea is on the same level as the land.

“It is also challenging working in this area because if you are moving outside of this area into any of the other areas, you find that you are working into what we call the East Coast or the Scotland District soils. It is challenging working in those areas because the soil is always moving as well. But in this area we always have challenges with the materials,” Leslie added.

He said the BWA will be working with the Ministry of Water Resources to change out a lot of the mains in other parts of St Joseph and St Andrew as new projects to upgrade roads in those communities come on stream.

He disclosed the authority will be using a special type of material more suited for the unstable conditions in replacing those mains.

Leslie said that when the projects start residents would experience some disruption in water supply but on completion, the quality and sustainability of the service would be greatly enhanced.

Acting General Manager Christopher Mapp apologized to the people of St Andrew and St Joseph for the near two-week water outage and thanked them for bearing with workmen as they tried to restore service.

“I just want to express on behalf of the BWA our sincerest apologies to the residents and customers in the area who would have been affected by the near two-week outage. I know it was not easy on the customers, but I assure you that the BWA worked tirelessly in the relaying of this main to get service back up in as short a time as possible,” Mapp said.
(EJ)