Relieve BWA of water management role

I was reminded by a recent publication from the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) that as a boy I had an old pet which would lie on top of an ant’s nest and when the ants started biting it, all it would do was moan, and moan and moan, rather than make the effort to just get up from the nest.  The BWA publication repeated that Barbados was a water-scarce country because it only had 81 100 gallons (307 cubic metres) of water per capita per annum. The fact is that Barbados receives the equivalent of over 500 000 gallons of rainwater per capita annually.  With a tiny fraction of that water, the Israelis made their desert bloom!

The BWA publication went on to argue that Barbados would need 81 million gallons of water a day to irrigate all 28 000 acres of its current arable land.  The fact is that all 28 000 acres could never be cultivated at the same time.  Crops must be rotated and at least 25 per cent would be fallow and being ploughed/cultivated at any one time.  Furthermore, at least another 10 per cent of the crops would be ripening and not being irrigated and when the 30 inches (762 millimetres) of effective rainfall that is received is taken into account no irrigation would be needed for more than 20 weeks of the year.

Why has the BWA greatly inflated, almost doubled, the irrigation water needs of Barbados? With good management of Barbados’ water resources (which we have never got from the BWA), we could irrigate a major portion if not all of our arable lands.  We have failed to keep our suck wells clean in order to adequately recharge our aquifers. Far too much flood water that could be captured and stored for the benefit of our people is being discharged into our coastal marine environment at capital costs, in tens of millions, for canals and outfalls.  Our economic “experts” seem to prefer that sort of unnecessary expenditure over that for water catchments which would provide irrigation water for our farmers.

It is high time that the Government of Barbados “bite the bullet” and relieve the BWA of the responsibility of managing our water resources which they have never done adequately.  In so doing, the BWA could focus on its most important job of distributing potable water to our residents and visitors.

I must also remind the government that they were warned over a year ago that the lined water catchments were dangerous, with significant mortality around the world, because anyone accidentally falling in such ponds cannot get back out unassisted, simply because the lining becomes too slippery to climb over.  The public needs to be educated and exit aids installed in all such ponds.  How many more fatalities will be needed before the necessary precautions are taken?

Round and round we go….

Peter Webster