Nassau, The Bahamas – The paving on Navy Lion Road and Marlborough Streets will smooth the path through the gates to the city of Nassau and lay the foundation for the Downtown Redevelopment Project and the facelift to Bay Street.
“The scope of the project covers an area from Nassau Court and Marlborough Street, down Bay Street, as far as the Paradise Island Bridge, including the side streets and Woodes Rogers Walk,” said Leslie Hutchinson, senior manager for the Water and Sewerage Corporation (WSC) Project Management Unit.
“The scope will encompass changing all of the water and sewer laterals in the mentioned areas.”
For the past four weeks, the WSC has been conducting inspections of cast iron pipes that have been underground, supplying New Providence for some 83 years. They are being replaced with a high-resistant polyurethane pipe, which will withstand the wear and tear of future population expansions.
“We are also undertaking a very detailed inspection of the sewer system with the camera. Any defects that we find, we are going to be changing them,” said Mr. Hutchinson.
“All of the work is being done in conjunction with the Downtown Nassau Partnership. And what the Government of the Bahamas has asked us to do is to make sure we cover all areas and all aspects of the water and sewer works, so that there is no need to come back in the future to make any adjustments.”
The government has assured that the plans for the Downtown Redevelopment Project, already approved by the Town Planning Committee, will not be altered by the water-works inspections.
“We’ve also been asked by the government to be careful not to excavate the sidewalks unless absolutely necessary. That is one of the reasons why we are doing the camera survey. We are not going to excavate the sidewalk unless we see some sign of failure of the infrastructure through the sidewalk,” said Mr. Hutchinson.
“We are not going to leave a single stone unturned. Everything will be examined, everything will be checked and anything, if it needs to be changed will be changed.”
The work will be done in sections. The first section will be from Nassau Court to Marlborough Street, as far as Parliament Street. It would include all the side corners, the main Bay Street, and Woodes Rogers Walk.
“The original sewer system was installed in 1928. There was some work done to the main trunk sewer on Bay Street in 1981, and that work did not include the sewer laterals, so for the sewer on the main Bay Street, what we are doing is changing the sewer laterals,” said Mr. Hutchinson.
“Again too, for the water, many of the water mains were changed during previous work, so the focus now is on changing those water laterals to polyethylene pipe, which is a new material, far more resilient.”
BTC and BEC have done their work already on the main Bay Street and are working hand in hand with WSC. They are ensuring that none of the infrastructure is damaged along with Ministry of Works engineers to minimise the need for excavation after the roadway is built. Most of the engineering groundwork was done in the early 1920s with a vision for the future expansion of New Providence to accommodate a flexible capital city, so it has made the renovation work for today’s utilities engineers less stressful.
“Back in the 1920s, when they did the original design without the aid of computers, they tended to over design. So, there is no need for us to upsize or change the size of the sewers. I must say the engineering work in those days was excellent and we can use grades they are using and it really helps in terms of minimising the amount of work that we have to do,” said Mr. Hutchinson.
By Gena Gibbs
BAHAMAS INFORMATION SERVICES
