By Robert A. Emmanuel
Government says plans have been put in place to increase water production levels from seven million gallons daily to nine million gallons, within the next few weeks.
The plans, as reported in the latest Cabinet meeting notes, are aimed at ensuring adequate water supply during the Carnival season.
At the post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday, Cabinet spokesperson Melford Nicholas said the government is in negotiations with two private reserve osmosis (RO) companies – NSW Management and Seven Seas Water Group – to aid in increasing water production.
“We are [following] through on some negotiations with two private water providers to bring on board approximately 1.5 million gallons of water into the grid.
“The second of the two private water operators will be providing a booth operation facility at Barnacle Point where we will expect, over the next 120 days, that we will move towards implementing that facility so that we could have an additional one million gallons of water in that area,” Minister Nicholas explained.
He added that it was his hope that a one-million-gallon plant could be built by Seven Seas—which has a facility in Trinidad—on a faster time-scale due to the company’s facilities being “containerised and modular”.
“When I was in Trinidad at the water loss conference, I would have visited a plant of theirs in Point Fortin along with [APUA’s Ian] Lewis and another engineer; we were impressed with the way they were able to consistently produce six million gallons per day,” he said.
Minister Nicholas, who is the country’s Minister of Public Utilities, also indicated that during his trip to Trinidad he sought aid from his counterpart there, Minister Marvin Gonzales, on an alternative system to Antigua and Barbuda’s “inadequate” 311-number system for water fault reporting.
He said he has requested help to create an app similar to Trinidad and Tobago’s Water and Sewage Authority (WASA) app.
Speaking more on the potential increases in water supply, the minister also revealed that a second RO plant at Fort James is expected to be operational by “late June to early/mid-July” which will produce another 500,000 gallons of water.
Nicholas said the ultimate goal of the additional facilities is to achieve reserve supplies of water.
“The plants, as they operate, would require intervals where you have to take a plant offline to serve its parts and you may be faced with breakdowns here and there, so you must have [spare] capacity to meet the average daily demand,” he explained.
