The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

AFTER nearly a week without running water, residents in Eleuthera saw their water supplies restored on Wednesday, however officials warned that pressure in some areas would be poor for the next 24 to 48 hours.

In view of this, Executive Chairman of the Water and Sewerage Corporation (WSC) Leslie Miller urged the government to reconsider its approach to water supply throughout the Family Islands.

Mr Miller’s comments came after reports that a catastrophic failure at the Naval Base Reverse Osmosis Plant in Eleuthera last Thursday resulted in “extended down time for the plant,” leaving area residents without running water.

The Tall Pines MP noted that while WSC wasn’t at fault for the matter, he would take full responsibility for this “national embarrassment.”

According to Mr Miller, General Electric (GE), the company that provides the island of Eleuthera with running water had expressed issues with its supplies late last week, but the extent of the problem was not clearly communicated.

On Sunday, WSC in a statement said that as a result of the “prolonged outage”, hundreds of customers, businesses and government entities have experienced loss of supply.

The statement called for water supply to be fully restored to the affected areas by Tuesday. However, Mr Miller confirmed that water supply had been fully restored in Eleuthera as of 4pm yesterday.

However, he indicated that the water pressure in some areas would be poor over the next 24 to 48 hours as the company continued to work to get services “up to par.”

“This is a crying shame,” Mr Miller said yesterday, before the water was restored.

“We at WSC can’t do anything in this matter because we are tied to the efforts of the company.”

Mr Miller explained that the government has arrangements in place on “most” Family Islands where it acquires water for resale.

He noted that in these cases, the government only acts as a “buffer” between suppliers and consumers.

In the case of Eleuthera, Mr Miller said the General Electric Corporation has been responsible for providing the local branch of WSC with water.

“I hate that we are in this sort of position and that is why I have pushed for the government to reconsider the way we approach these deals, because look at what we are dealing with today. The entire island is at a standstill. We can’t have these kind of resources in the hands of foreign groups and companies.”

WSC has said that it is dedicated to medium and long-term plans for improving water quality, supply and storage on the entire island of Eleuthera.

The corporation has announced a $41m project partly funded by the Caribbean Development Bank that would promote initiatives such as a desalinated water supply for northern Eleuthera and increased storage and production capacity to mitigate the effects of supply failures.