(FP)

The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) wishes to sincerely apologize for the inconvenience which its customers in some northern and eastern sections of the island continue to experience as a result of water outages.

Acting Director of Engineering at the BWA, Elvin Jordan, has indicated that several factors are affecting the Authority’s ability to properly service some St. Joseph, St. John, St. Thomas and St. Andrew districts.

The situation, which has resulted in outages, has arisen as a result of prevailing reduced rainfall conditions, which have caused further reduction in water supply well levels at the Bowmanston, Applewhaites and Sweet Vale locations. As a result, further significant reduction in pumping into the Distribution Systems supplied by these wells and reservoirs has occurred at facilities which in turn feed the affected areas. The ability to deliver water is periodically affected by electrical outages by Barbados Light & Power; and failure of the pumping equipment may also occur as a result of the power outages.

The combination of the above has led to difficulty in getting the distribution systems replenished and sustained.

The Authority is doing its best to address the issues and rebalance the distribution network to assist the residents of all affected areas, wherever possible. However, none of the solutions is a quick fix as there is an overall significant reduction in the water available for pumping to these areas.

In the interim, the BWA is actively conducting leak detection work to identify and address any leaks in the affected areas; continuing the implemented nightly shutoffs in the St. John, St. George, St. Thomas and St. Lucy areas to mitigate the water woes; placing additional community tanks in some of the worst affected districts; and scheduling regular routine tanker visits to the affected areas. These will be publicized shortly.

Again, the BWA is very mindful of the inconvenience being caused to its valued customers and apologizes and commits to working towards resolution of the issues.

Please remember that the Authority may be contacted at 434-4292 or via Facebook to report or address any issue you may be experiencing.

BWA Marketing/Communications Dept.

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