A year and a half after agreeing to pay a foreign company more than $80 million to reduce water losses, the Water and Sewerage Corporation is now experiencing a “significant” increase in leakage, general manager Glen Laville admitted.
This water loss surge, the cause of which Mr Laville was unable to explain, is the reason why WSC has again taken to rationing water supply at certain hours.
At the time the contract was signed, the corporation reported that it lost just over five million gallons of water a day, but earlier this year, WSC put this number at 6.5 million – which translates into a loss of $16 million a year.
Mr Laville said although the corporation also signed a deal to expand their Baillou Hills desalination plant, allowing for the purification of an additional 4.0 million imperial gallons of water a day, the problem isn’t production.
“Unfortunately what really happened is demand has increased slightly but losses have increased rather significantly; and so all the extra production capacity that we made arrangements for and that came out of the move from tankering to desalination, the majority of it has ended up as water losses – non-revenue water.
The corporation will periodically interrupt water services for residents of New Providence until further notice.
The water rationing exercises are taking place nightly between 10pm and 5am in an effort to conserve water for periods of peak usage.
