The Concord Water Plant is earmarked to receive a much needed upgrade to increase its daily production from 300, 000 gallons, to a capacity of 700, 000 gallons as a means to “alleviate the burdens” of the Annandale Water Treatment Plant, and ease water woes faced by residents and businesses in the south of the island.
This is one of the objectives of the South St. George ‘Water Supply Expansion and Sewerage Improvement Project, which has been in the pipeline since 2016, and is scheduled to commence early next year.
Planning and Development Manager at the National Water and Sewerage Authority (NAWASA) Whyme Cox told reporters last week Tuesday that the Annandale plant, which is NAWASA’s largest water treatment facility, producing on average 2.5 million gallons of water per day “is stretched to its limits” in meeting the “additional demand” for water supply in the South of the island, which comprises a significant mixture of residents, as well as the tourism and industrial belts.
Supplied by three (3) transmission lines from the dam, the Annandale plant serves an average 57,000 customers stretched from Annandale through to Point Salines.
“We just don‘t have sufficient water to supply the demands at the South given our vulnerability to climate change, and rainfall during the rainy season,” Cox told reporters at the week’s post-Cabinet media briefing in St. George’s.
He said the project seeks to upgrade the Concord Water Treatment Plant and expand the main water supply network, which currently stops just before the Sendall tunnel supplying the Town of St. George.
He explained that the project, which is being funded through the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) under the United Kingdom Caribbean Infrastructure Partnership Fund (UKCIF), will see the installation of lines that will make the additional 400, 000 gallons of water, which will be produced at the improved Concord plant, accessible to the south “passing through the Sendall Tunnel onto The Carenage, Lagoon Road, going all the way down to the south as far as Sandals hotel” in Point Salines.
He said that the estimated US$12m” project, will also see the expansion of the Lagoon Road sewerage network, with plans to incorporate it into an upgraded St. George’s sewerage network.
The NAWASA Planning and Development Manager stated as it stands now, sewerage collected are not treated before being pumped into the sea.
“We don’t treat the sewerage that is collected,” he told reporters.
Citing environmental concerns, Cox noted that having “identified that limitation” the Authority has been “taking proactive steps and measures to deal with it.
“So, the consultant has to give us a design…a road map for treating the sewerage that we collect, following which we are going to implement treatment stations so that whatever we collect is treated before it goes out into the environment,” he added.
Cox said that while “we (NAWASA) appreciate these issues and how they affect the environment “we can argue that to date, what we do (pumping the untreated sewerage out into the sea) is by no means impacting our shoreline because we are forever doing monthly samples, and tests just to ensure that what’s happening is not affecting our coastal areas.”
According to the Planning and Development Manager at NAWASA, once the Trinidad-based Alpha Engineering and Construction Ltd., finalises the project feasibility study, it will go before the CDB for approval, which is expected to take place sometime in January followed by the process to tender and then to procure a contractor.
“We are conducting the final reviews of that feasibility study but meanwhile the detail designs are actually happening as we speak. Last week the Consultant was on the ground just collecting, and verifying additional data as we finalise the detailed designs,” he said.
“The intent is to have final approval from the Caribbean Development Bank for the capital works in the month of January 2022, following which the project is going to go for tendering and procurement of a contractor for the installations of the lines, and all of the upgrades that need to happen,” he added.