Car valets allowed to operate despite water restrictions

Car valets and other commercial vehicle businesses can continue to operate under the current water restrictions, Director of Engineering at Barbados Water Authority Charles Leslie has confirmed.
Providing some clarification on the April 24 to June 30 prohibition notice, Leslie gave the requirements for valet operations while speaking to the media at the Bowmanston Pumping Station on Wednesday.
“We have been hearing the car valet owners saying the prohibition will affect their businesses. In the notice itself, those valet persons are considered to be commercial vehicle wash businesses. It says ‘a commercial vehicle wash, a business that services, details or repairs vehicles or a vehicle dealership may wash vehicles provided that garden hoses or pressure washers rated at less than three gallons per minute are fitted with the automatic shut off valves’. So we would have catered for those businesses in developing the notice, so I want to allay the fears that they were having,” he said.
Uses of water have been limited from Monday to conserve the island’s groundwater supply amid the last few months of persistent dry conditions. There are prohibitions on the use of potable water for the irrigation or watering of gardens, lawns and grounds by hose or a sprinkler system; the filling or supply of tanks, ponds, baths or swimming pools, other than for dipping tanks for cattle, domestic baths not exceeding 120 litres or 32 gallons in capacity; and elevated reserve tanks not exceeding 800 litres or 211 gallons in capacity and connected to household sewerage or water supply systems; washing of roadways, pavements, paths, garages, or vehicles by hose; and the washing of windows and building exteriors.
“We do not want to move to the stage like some of our other Caribbean neighbours. We want to be able to ride through this. We’re not at a critical stage, but we are taking all precautions to ensure that we don’t get to that stage,” Leslie cautioned.
He also used the opportunity to correct the misconception that most of the water used in Barbados is derived from the sea.
“All of the water that we currently use in Barbados comes from groundwater, even the water that is desalinated at Spring Garden and Hope,” Leslie explained. “At these locations, we extract water from the ground from boreholes or wells and then we run it through the desalination system, so it is still groundwater. We do not extract water directly from the sea.”
(JB)