THE BARBADOS WATER AUTHORITY (BWA) will begin casing and grouting of the second injection well today, as it works feverishly to solve the South Coast Sewerage Plant issues.
Four injection wells are part of the BWA’s mitigation plan for the plant, and general manager Keithroy Halliday reported yesterday the casing and grouting of the first of these wells were already completed, and testing now had to be done.
They were awaiting results of dye-testing samples from the first well, which have been sent to an overseas lab for analysis.
“We are optimistic that the results will guide us on how we can complete the well field and from there we should be able to start injecting the excreted waste,” he said yesterday at a meeting of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association at Hilton Barbados.
Halliday updated BHTA members on actions taken by the BWA, explaining the Authority had been exhausting its operational cash flow to meet the demands for constant maintenance, repairs and response.
He said the failure of pumps and issues with network connections had resulted in the sewage overflows that caused much distress to businesses and inconvenienced road users along the affected sections of the South Coast.
The general manager said seven to nine million gallons of sewage went into the South Coast plant daily from an estimated 3 000 connections, and stressed pumping issues were a major factor in the problems being experienced.
He conceded the BWA had “not been able to maintain” a ten-inch pump installed earlier as a mitigation measure to increase the plant’s capacity to allow influent to be pulled in, but announced a 10×10-inch pump installed last week had been helping with containing the overflows.
Meanwhile, to alleviate the overflows, he said a station on Bay Street had been reactivated, while identifying the areas by Big B Supermarket, Worthing; Lanterns Mall in Hastings and Graeme Hall, all in Christ Church, as the three problem areas where effluent had from time to time been flowing into the streets. (GC)
