Essential services and the vulnerable will be given priority over the next 26 hours as thousands of Barbadians face water outages and low pressure.
The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) on Friday announced scheduled maintenance from 8 p.m. today until 10 p.m. tomorrow at Ionics Freshwater Ltd, which augments the St Stephen’s Reservoir.
BWA Rapid Response and Communications Manager Joyann Haigh urged residents to store water.
“We ask the public to be mindful of the usage over the next 26 hours, store your water, the tankers will assist; bearing in mind any emergency systems that may be impacted in those areas will be given water first,” she told the Sunday Sun.
“And we are hoping the domestic customers in hearing the notice, would store some water that would hold them for 26 hours which then would allow the tanker service to deal with any essential services. We would be looking at things like old people’s homes in the areas; they would get priority.”
Haigh said businesses with tanks would be replenished, but the Ministry of Health would have to make a determination on places which sold food but did not have tanks.
While some of the other systems may be tapped to supplement the affected areas (see below), Haigh advised residents to limit water usage during the period.
“Always you should conserve water, but if you can do so in the next 26 hours put it down to what is essential to do towards your personal needs, domestic needs whether it be hygiene and so on. Anything outside of that that can wait until it comes back up, we would be very grateful, not only for BWA and Ionics, but neighbours who might be in higher areas.”
Residents in the following areas could potentially be impacted by the shutdown. (SAT/AD)
