The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

AN $83m project to slash the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s system losses has more than paid for itself by generating more than $100m in savings, its contractor asserted yesterday.

Mario Tavera, the Miya Bahamas project manager, who led the execution of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) funded effort to cut the Corporation’s non-revenue water losses on New Providence, said the savings returns exceeded the value of the financing.

“We estimate the project was $83m, but we probably saved more than $100m. Much more. Because water here is very expensive at almost $9 for 1,000 gallons,” Mr Tavera told the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Regional Conference (CWWA).

The project is forecast to save 13m gallons of water by December 2022. Based on a cost of $9 per 1,000 gallons, he added that the Water & Sewerage Corporation has saved a “significant” amount of money because of Miya’s intervention through IDB.

Mr Tavera said: “Considering a marginal cost of production of $8.88 per 1,000 gallons, this is over $120m. So we have overcome the cost of the project by far. When we started we still had two main supply stations, one in the east that supplies 70 percent of the island, and the rest is supplied by pumping station in the west.”

Maintenance and technology upgrades, though, are critical to sustain this level of savings. “The technology needs to be updated every five years. For example, some valves we are already replacing. Even if we have to forego some profit we are changing them,” Mr Tavera said.

“Also, the flow meters for the main, they have a life of ten years. The technologies are consistently changing, and when we started it was a totally different water industry. That’s for everything and not only for water.”

The project was initiated in 2011, and was supposed to last ten years. It was extended to leave Miya operating under four different administrations but, come December 2022, it will be exiting The Bahamas to leave the Water & Sewerage Corporation with responsibility to maintain what it has put in place. “We will leave behind operations manuals and information for Water & Sewerage Corporation staff to operate the new system,” said Mr Tavera.

Suggesting that public-private partnerships (PPP) should be used to manage efforts to reduce non-revenue water as part of the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s ‘master plan’, Mr Tavera said continual training for the state-owned utility’s staff is a “concern” after Miya leaves.

Mr Tavera said this was a “major concern” for the IDB, but added that this was why the project was designed to last ten years. “Because of this we did several training sessions in the first years with several different personnel over four different governments, but this was a turnkey project which we will turnover to the Water & Sewerage Corporation and it is able to be separated,” he added.