According to Met Office data, this March and April were among the driest in decades, with less than an inch of rain recorded on New Providence in either month.
Nassau gets an average of about 55 inches of rain annually (mostly in the summer), but for the first four months of this year, rainfall has been half what it was in the same period of the preceding three years. So what’s the state of our fresh water supplies?
New Providence – where two thirds of Bahamian households and most of the country’s 11,000 hotel rooms are located – is critically short of water.
The well fields are overused and much of the water table is polluted.
So to meet the demand of about 10 million gallons per day, the Water & Sewerage Corporation ships half of that amount daily from its North Andros well field. It has been doing this since 1976. A few years ago, the cost per thousand gallons shipped was put at $5.84.
But weather conditions, mechanical breakdowns and poor infrastructure often result in shortfalls. To resolve this, the WSC is currently evaluating bids from five international groups to build a multi-million-dollar reverse osmosis plant in Nassau.
Two of the groups – Consolidated Water of the Cayman Islands and Ionics Inc of Massachusetts – already operate smaller RO plants in the Bahamas…on Bimini, Inagua and New Providence.
The new plant will be located at the WSC’s Blue Hills distribution centre.
It will be built and operated by the successful bidder, and designed to produce 5 million gallons a day for sale to the government.
But there is a competing proposal on the table to build a 30-mile pipeline to Nassau from central Andros at a cost of over $100 million.
Freeport-based investor Hannes Babak is reported to be one of the main backers of this scheme (under the name of Hydro Bahamas), which promises to deliver as much as 15 million gallons a day.
The pipeline project has been in the air for months but Works Minister Bradley Roberts acknowledged only recently that it was under active review by cabinet. No environmental impact study has been conducted, and the scheme poses some interesting engineering challenges.
Construction would require the use of remote-operated undersea vehicles and other advanced and expensive equipment. But the developers won’t conduct technical feasibility studies until the project is approved in principle.
Miles of high-volume pipeline will be laid from the Fresh Creek area through the Andros barrier reef and across the Tongue of the Ocean -which is 6,500 feet deep. To add to the difficulty, there is a several hundred foot deep canyon that is affected by deep ocean currents right in the middle of the trough. The pipeline must be suspended over this.
Hydro Bahamas reportedly wants a 99-year Crown lease on a vast area of central Andros, some of which is already part of the Andros National Park system. Bahamas National Trust officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Development of the central Andros well field (which is many times the size of the government’s 6,000 acre field at Morgan’s Bluff) will involve cutting roads and digging deep wells or trenches, as well as building power stations and other facilities in the wilderness.
Some independent experts have pointed to the difficulty of extracting 15 million gallons a day from a well field, considering that the government already has trouble pumping 5 million gallons a day from Morgan’s Bluff.
And some Androsians are concerned that the island’s resources are being stripped without regard for its own potential development, or general ecological health: “Andros water must be better managed and used in a sustainable way.
“Those of us who live here or have researched here are already alarmed at the lack of health and productivity of our island ecosystems, which are all under stress,” said Margo Blackwell of the Bahamas Environmental Research Centre at Staniard Creek.
“The government must act on its responsibility to have environmental decisions understood by the people directly affected, and to ensure that whatever development that takes place is environmentally sustainable.”
Meanwhile, the pipeline proposal is being heavily lobbied as a better alternative to the construction of an RO plant at Blue Hills…and politicians of all stripes are said to be involved.
There are more than 6,000 RO plants operating worldwide today and they produce drinking water in 10 Caribbean countries. Reverse osmosis works by passing water at high pressure through a semi-permeable membrane to remove salts and other impurities.
The leftover brine is disposed of in the ground by deep-injection wells, similar to those already used for sewerage disposal in Nassau. No ocean outfall pipes are involved.
Experts say this is a tried and proven technology both internationally and in the Bahamas, as is the method of deep well disposal of brine and seawater supply.
RO plants have been operating regionally since the 1960’s, and especially during the last 15 years as costs have dropped and technology has improved.
Energy costs (to pump the water at high pressure) are a fraction of what they were 25 years ago.
According to the Organisation of American States, aside from the need to dispose of the brine, RO has a negligible environmental impact and makes minimal use of chemicals. But it does require heavy maintenance and a reliable energy source.
The government has spent over $300 million in the last decade or so in the water sector, according to official documents. And it is clear that adequate fresh water supplies are critical to the country’s future.
The Andros tankering system was meant to be a short-term fix. The long-term plan was to phase in RO plants at the main demand centres.
Despite earlier suggestions (local plumber Nigel Jones once recommended a floating pipeline from Andros), pipelines were ruled out because of the heavy capital costs and technical challenges involved.
And what about rainwater harvesting, a 4,000-year-old technology that we seem to have lost sight of in the Bahamas. The Turks and Caicos have a number of government-built, public rainfall catchment systems.
And it it mandatory there for all developers to construct water cisterns.
But according to the WSC, although the use of rainwater tanks is helpful and still encouraged, they are not a solution for the Bahamas’ water woes.
“It was effective when per capita use of water was in the 5 gallons per day range – before internal plumbing. But middle class Bahamians now use about 70 gallons per day and tourists often use 150,” officials said. “Rainwater tanks are widely used in the Abaco Cays, but all of these go dry at this time of year and water is now being barged to them. The residents of these islands want piped water from the WSC.”
It’s a tough call. Because there are no easy answers. The fact is that 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, but less than 1 per cent of this is usable by humans, and that is unevenly distributed.
Clearly, water efficiency should be a key national planning goal.
Many elements would have to be involved to achieve this, including distribution system audits,conservation education, promotion of water-efficient landscaping, new plumbing technologies, and re-use and recycling facilities.
But political will and public information are perhaps the most important factors. And they are often lacking in the Bahamas.
Larry Smith, The Tribune
(Larry Smith is a Bahamian journalist with 20 years of business experience. He is The Tribune’s online manager/editor: larry@tribunemedia.net).
