More water as PUC meets supply target |21 September 2011

Water users between Providence and Au Cap including Anse aux Pins will soon benefit from the 6 million litres per day extra water boost when 6-inch diameter pipes now being laid up to Cascade are in place, taking water to a giant water tank to be erected at Cascade for further delivery south.

PUC’s project officer Ravin Sunasee said this yesterday when he showed the media the four new desalination plants at Providence which were switched on this month, and the two which helped supply Ile Perseverance with water during the Indian Ocean Island Games last month.

The PUC has therefore now finished – within six weeks as promised – the first phase of the project it set out to complete to ease the water crisis brought on by unexpected severe drought.

“At Bel Ombre, however, we opted to undertake the plant installation straight to phase II as adequate water was available during the month of August. However rainfall recorded has reduced during the past few days and the situation is being monitored closely and the installation will be accelerated if necessary,” he said.

He said the phase I projects were done to avoid drawing too much water from La Gogue dam which now has 35% of its capacity, and to use the desalination plants as back-up.

“If we didn’t have the plants the restrictions would have been much more severe,” he said, adding the PUC is drawing a bit more water from the dam than before “because with the backup we are not very worried”.

“We were not able to install the plant we wished to at Anse aux Pins because the procedure to acquire the plot of land we needed was too long. We decided to install two plants on Ile Perseverance instead and a 2-million-litre tank at Cascade to so that water can be pumped from Providence to Cascade and then distributed to the Anse aux Pin region up to Au Cap.

He said another tank will be installed at Anse Boileau to distribute water to Anse à la Mouche, Baie Lazare, Takamaka, Anse Royale down to Au Cap.

“A third 1-million-litre tank will be installed at Quincy Village to stabilise water distribution to the North East Point/Carana areas,” he said.