Residents of that western-most Bahamian island are being plagued by water shortages, because contractors for a reverse osmosis plant used a 30-year-old storage tank instead of building a new one, The Guardian has learned.
With dwindling supplies over several weeks, some Bimini businesses closed on Friday as the city water supply was reduced to a trickle.
On Sunday, Minister of Works and Utilities Bradley Roberts told The Guardian that when the developers of the Aqua Plant (Aqua Design Bahamas Ltd. and RAV Bahamas Ltd/) commissioned reverse osmosis equipment in Bimini last year, they were required to install holding tanks, but decided that the antiquated, existing concrete holding tank on the island was adequate.
This was obviously not the case, he said.
“Therefore a brand new tank is landing in Bimini this week and will be installed as quickly to correct that problem. It is because of the water leak that is causing the pressure to fluctuate.
“This has just come to my attention on Thursday of last week, but this may have started a couple of weeks ago, but the water and sewerage corporation was on top of it.”
The $500,000 plant, capable of providing 125,000 gallons of “high quality” water per day, was commissioned in November, 2002.
An irate resident of North Bimini, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the water in Bimini was “dripping” since last week Wednesday, with no change in pressure on Sunday.
The resident said the office of the Department of Environmental Health was one of the many entities closed on Thursday, because staff could not use restroom facilities.
“A lot of people were calling environmental health, but they were closed,” the resident stated. “They said that there was no way they were going to work under those conditions, and I really don’t know what the problem is.”
There were rumours that the water shortage was due to the large amount being used in the Bimini Bay project, but that was denied by Godfrey Sherman acting general manager of the water corporation.
He said Sunday that some water is being used by the project, but the problem is the leak in the storage tank, which normally provides well over 90,000 gallons of water daily.
“What is happening is that even though the water can be produced, they can only put so much into the tank at one time in order for it to be utilized,” he said.
The problem is a “recent occurrence,” Mr. Sherman said.
“I have confirmed with the manufacturers that the tank will be delivered next week, and by the end of the month, this tank will be erected,” he said.
“These were the tanks that they used to catch rain water in, but because it gave them a quick solution to get the Bimini supply sorted out, we decided to use them and work on the long-term tank requirement,” he said.
But apart from the storage tank leak, Mr. Sherman said, there were other “minor” problems on Friday, causing the water pressure to either trickle or stop completely.
“What we may be confusing is that there is more than one thing happening at the same time. In other words, they were having some problems because of the storage tank; then on Friday, something else went wrong,” said Mr. Sherman.
He said that he was “not sure” about the exact problem Friday, apart from the leaking tank.
According to Mr. Sherman, before detecting a leak in the tank, Bimini was using about 70,000 gallons of water a day before the supply became “intermittent.”
The new tank will hold some 300,000 gallons of water and the costs will be borne by the contractor, he said.
Last week Sunday, the Water and Sewerage Corp. warned New Providence customers of difficulty with water distribution.
The corporation said there were a combination of problems with the system, resulting in low water pressure in the Blue Hills and Prospect “pumping zones”.
The Blue Hills area includes: South Beach, Carmichael Road, Golden Gates, Bel-air Estates, Sunset Park, Coral Harbour, Adelaide, Flamingo Gardens “and other areas”; while the Prospect zone includes: Prospect Ridge, Boyd Subdivision, Stapledon Gardens, Oakes Field, Bain Town, St. James Road and Sutton Street.
The press release said water reserves were critically low and reserve levels needed to be built up.
By Tamara McKenzie, The Nassau Guardian
