A dry season has forced the Water and Sewerage Corporation to issue a consumer advisory for patrons to conserve their water supply as the production shortfall stands at 1 million gallons per day.
At a press conference on Wednesday to announce the 13th Annual Water Week events, Acting Deputy General Manager Godfrey Sherman said New Providence has a critical water supply situation, and the corporation is now operating in a conservation mode, and encourages consumers to do likewise.
He said the water supply has to be cut back to maintain an adequate storage level.
Normal pumping operation will occur from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on a daily basis during these peak periods.
Reduced pumping will take place during the off peak hours and late at night he said, adding that consumers can call 325-0505 if they experience a "no-water" situation over any twelve hour period.
Water wastage due to leakage is a concern of the corporation where they receive over 1,000 complaints per month due to this problem.
Further, he said, a lot of the water that is provided by the corporation is still unaccounted for.
"There is the perception that all is wasted. We have some ideas of where some of the non-accounted for is but one of the areas where we have to put the primary concern is leakage. The fact that we have over 500 miles of pipe work in the network, means that we do need the public's support in reporting any leakage or wastage that they can see," Mr. Sherman said.
He said on average, individuals should be using 35 -50 gallons of water per day.
"One of the problems that we find from our customer services operation is that a lot of people come in here and they are faced with very high bills, only to find out that there are a number of leaking facilities within their own households," he said. Toilets in particular, said Mr. Sherman, of which 40 per cent of household water is flushed.
Although there are more than 15 storage tanks in New Providence, the effective storage capacity is just over 40 million gallons he said.
"This is minimum amount of storage when compared to industry standards and it also creates an added pressure for production capacity to be maintained at a maximum level at all times. The more reliance on seasonal and other alternative resources, the higher volume of backup storage would be required," Mr. Sherman said.
He explained that ground water lenses are produced when rainwater is captured below ground and floats on the top of the more brackish water. These lenses, he said, must be constantly recharged to maintain their level of production.
"Unfortunately, The Bahamas is in the height of its dry season, resulting in water production from underground water to be reduced. Seasonal rainfall will allow production capacity to increase multi-fold as floodwater becomes available," he said.
Mr. Sherman said that rainfall in New Providence is sparsely distributed to different areas, but "that is like killing the dust on the ground. We need those inches of rain that could eliminate all of the dryness that is there and then begin to recharge the whole system."
On an average, New Providence has about 60 inches of annual rainfall, and 12 inches of that must enter the ground and be used as a recharge into the aquifer to replenish the lenses he said.
Since December 1997, the corporation has been in operation of a 15 year contract with a company to provide 2 million gallons of water per day.
"There are always minor hiccups with that operation, and so the capacity, while it is very productive when it is, if you look at the long term performance, and if you average it out, it is 1.7 million gallons per day. From a cumulative affect, that is a significant factor for us. Desalination is a viable process for us to get water, but it is also one of the more costly ways of developing a water supply. Groundwater is still the cheapest way of producing water in The Bahamas, and even though the water is imported from Andros, that is still a natural ground water resource that is being made available to us," he said.
He said in order to improve the service delivery standard to consumers, the volume of water being delivered over the past few months has increased by more than one half million gallons per day.
The barging of water he said, has also posed a problem for the corporation.
Bad weather conditions, along with a series of mechanical problems have adversely affected the shipping operations throughout the first quarter of this year, with the average delivery for this period being 4.4 million gallons per day (mgd). The deficit of which has contributed to the decline in storage levels he said.
"This situation for a short term will worsen as one of the vessels will require dry docking in Freeport in late May and alternative arrangements will have to be in place to make up the additional shortfall," he said.
Mr. Sherman said that the expected production level from the Reverse Omosis is 2 mgd, but last week due to mechanical upgrade, production levels dropped to 1.7 mgd.
"Every effort is being made to increase production so that this period of inconvenience can be minimized and normal operations can be resumed as soon as possible. The corporation sincerely apologizes for this unfortunate circumstance and assures the public that improvements will be seen in short order and we will continue working toward long term solutions that will mitigate such events in the future," he said.
By Vanessa C. Rolle, The Nassau Guardian
