From left to right: Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Joy St. John; Anthony Headley, Acting Director of the Environmental Protection Department; General Manager of the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), Dr. John Mwansa; and Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc., Stuart Layne, looking at the results of recent tests on Worthing Beach after a press conference at the Hilton Barbados yesterday morning.
Some $2 million has been allocated to purchase and install several pieces of equipment needed to address challenges associated with the workings of the South Coast Sewage Plant.
That’s the word from Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc. (BTII), Stuart Layne, who informed media personnel present for a press conference at the Hilton Barbados yesterday morning, that the money is coming from the entity he oversees. He explained that one of the BTII’s responsibilities is urban regeneration and programming, under which the work on the plant “fits snugly”.
“The total cost of the repairs is projected at $2 million and as you heard it is not a simple case where you can buy these items out of a shelf, you have to actually order them and have them made and that is going to take eight to ten weeks – eight weeks for importation and two weeks for installation,” he said.
According to Layne, the parts have already been ordered and he is giving the assurance that the BTII has the “cash in the bank” and is ready to pay the bills as they come in. His comments came as he said the goal is not only to address the challenges in the short-term, but medium- and long-term as well.
Layne was speaking just moments after the General Manager of the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), Dr. John Mwansa, explained what led to the sewage challenges that have been experienced on the South Coast in recent times, and what steps are being taken to remedy the situation.
According to Mwansa, the South Coast Sewage Plant, which became operational in 2003, had two occasions in the month of November where effluent pumps failed. On the first occasion in early November, the general manager explained, the pump’s failure reduced the capacity to push the effluent quickly out to sea, which resulted in an overflow in the collection system and overflows also emerged from some manholes. He said the pump was repaired and the overflow stopped, but then the Plant had another failure the following week and a similar outcome was seen. Now while both situations were successfully fixed, Mwansa said heavy rains on November 29 presented yet another challenge for the BWA.
“What we have noticed over the years of the operation of the plant is that when we get heavy rainfall the flow to the plant increases, which would mean that you are getting some of that rain water getting into the sewer system. Our treatment plant was not designed to handle sewage and storm water, it basically was only designed to handle sewage water, so when you get that added amount of storm water on top of that the capacity of our effluent pumps can be exceeded. The incident that we had on November 29 when we got six inches of rain within a two-hour period resulted in the water levels within Graeme Hall Swamp rising to a point where some of the neighbouring properties were also being submerged and we had an increased flow into the sewer system,” he said.
He explained that when the water level in the swamp rises above a certain point there is also an increase in wastewater levels in the Plant and when the swamp level subsides so too do the levels in the Plant. Given that, he said they made a request for the sluice gate to be opened to allow for the lowering of the water level within the swamp and since Thursday, he revealed, they have had no overflow of the manholes. He noted too that on examination of the manholes, it was found that a significant amount of grease was in them, which also had the ability to choke the system and impact the pumps at the Plant.
To ensure the Plant is operating efficiently, the BWA boss said they will ensure that all the equipment is running properly and they have ordered new equipment including effluent pumps to replace the now obsolete ones. He said they have also embarked on an intensified flushing system, and will be flushing the system at night to attempt to get some of the grease out; and they have divers cleaning the existing diffusers. Mwansa said that the latter will be done in the interim until the new diffusers arrive next month to replace those which are dysfunctional. (JRT)
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