I am writing to draw attention to the lack of Government action regarding the lack of services in Bathsheba.
Firstly , let me explain that the water has been going off almost every day for about one month now. At one period it was off for three full days. It is often turned off for over 24 hours at a time and when I telephone the BWA, I am given a battery of excuses with the ultimate result being – NO ONE KNOWS WHY, or they are not saying.
I often hear excuses like “Bowmanston is giving trouble”. or Golden Ridge has “pumping problems”. Some are honest and say “I have no idea and this is the weekend , so even if you go out and find the burst yourself, nobody is going to come and fix it till Monday.”
With the Joes River bridge being closed, the tankers do not want to come out here and distribute water and people are left to fend for themselves. The bridge is being “worked on” (and I use that term very loosely) by the MTW, and there is no telling how long it will take for them to repair it. Let’s face it, Lion Castle bridge has been under construction for two years and it is still not fixed.
I would like for the Government of Barbados to explain why we are having these outages and what they plan to do to fix the faults. I would also like to plead with the Government to give the job of repairing Joes River Bridge to the private sector, so that it can be repaired soonest.
(name withheld by BFP editor)
Barbados Free Press 
I live in this area & am also sick to death of the intermittent water problems we are having here. I too phone every time we lose the water & get a different reason every time, I’ve heard the pumps not working, there’s a burst in Cattlewash/Bathsheba/Glenburnie/Foster Hall etc etc when I phoned Golden Ridge last week I was told the reservoir was not full, when I replied ‘I haven’t heard that one before’ I was met with silence & told to phone again. When I complained we are promised a water truck but never see one the assistant told me they had three but only one was working!! Our water went off sometime last night (before 5am ) it was off 90% of Saturday & Sunday, when I phoned after work today I was told ‘I don’t know, I can’t tell you about something I don’t know anything about’!!
The efficiency of BWA is startling!
Here is one possible explanation.
The easily avilable water resources have been allocated and are in use since the mid 1990’s.
If you read the “Economic and Social Report” (last one I saw was 2005) and look at the delivery of water by BWA you will see that it peaked and plateaued in the mid 1990’s.
This was predicted in the 1978 Water Resources Report, ……. down to the year it would happen.
You can also read the Senn Report from 1946 which calculates what water would be available from the various catchment areas in Barbados.
The water resource is limited by the physical surface area (fixed) of the island and rainfall which fluctuates on average between 40 and 60 inches per year.
My gut feeling is that there is not enough water to go around to all areas on a 24×7 basis so there will be some that will miss out periodically.
Hope somebody proves me wrong but that’s my opinion.
Short term …..
Heavy rains = Mud in water at Bowmanston.
Saw a tender in today’s Advocate from BWA to build a retaining wall in Pool Gully.
Possibly related.
Still think the utilisation of water resource is the issue and more areas will get affected in the long term.
How can we let something like the travesty at Jose River Bridge happen? Solution make a road through one of the last remaining naturally forested areas in Barbados and after it gets too muddy shut it down and try to fix the bridge? Same ole same ole bout hey! Article coming!
All the land through Joe’s River Forest is subject to landslip.
Hopefully the dirt road was cut with sense otherwise it may add to the landslip jeopardy.
The residents below that land should be watching the land uphill very closely especially if there is alot of rain.
The reason is that in an emergency they may be cut off from escape or help. There are ways down from the top of the cliff, but not for vehicles.
Here is the story about the 1785 Crabhole Landslip which should make residents and authorities proceed with utmost caution.
Crabhole used to be the name for St. Elizabeth’s Village. Walcott’s Plantation was close to Andromeda.
The boulders are evidence of past land movements.
They stretch from the beach right up the cliff face.
An Account of the Crab-hole land slide, 11th. October, 1785
From: The History of Barbados by John Poyer, first published in 1808, pp. 569-571.
“Among the various operations of nature, which excite our admiration, alarm our fears, or amuse our imagination, the following singular and extraordinary phenomenon will not probably be deemed the least curious and interesting.
On the eleventh day of October, the inhabitants of a part of St. Joseph’s parish called Crab-Hole, were alarmed at the appearance of several deep fissures in the earth, and their apprehensions were soon augmented, at finding that some small tenements had sunk to a considerable depth.
These alarming appearances continuing to increase, many persons were induced to remove their effects to places of greater safety. The plantation known by the name of Walcott’s, was destined to be the melancholy scene of this extraordinary occurrence.
Here, the manager, perceiving that the mansion house was in danger of being buried under the soil, which was descending in large, connected masses, from a neighbouring hill, fled with his family to one of the negro huts for shelter.
In the course of that distressful night, most of the buildings of the plantation fell, or sunk into a deep chasm, which was presently filled up with the mold from the adjacent heights.
The alarm now became general, and the people assembling near the spot were witnesses of a scene of truly awful and affecting. The aspect of the whole region from Walcott’s to Crab-hole, extending upwards of a mile in length, and in breadth about three hundred yards, exhibited a lamentable prospect.
The earth, violently torn asunder, was intersected with numerous chasms, whose widely extended jaws seemed ready to ingulph whatever might be precipitated into them; while, in other places, it was swelled and inflated with enormous tumours, whose convulsive motions menaced the few remaining buildings with destruction.
Nor was it long before they were involved in the general wreck, and, sinking into the yawning gulf, left no traces of their former existence behind them.
The face of nature was so completely changed in that district, that few of the inhabitants could ascertain the spot on which many objects, familiar to their remembrance, had been recently placed.
A field, planted in Eddoes, occupied the site on which the mansion house stood, and brought with it a long slip of the broad road, as perfect and entire as if it had not been removed*.
The cocoa-nut trees, which grew about the house, and even the windmill, were gradually carried some hundred yards from their original position, where the latter was completely swallowed up, no part of it remaining visible but the extremity of the upper arm.
It is not easy, perhaps, to explain satisfactorily the cause of this phenomenon. Probable conjecture ascribed it to the action of a number of subterraneous springs, in a loamy sandy soil, surrounded with recent excessive falls of rain: these springs, struggling for vent, might probably have excavated the encumbent earth wherever they endeavoured to force a passage. As these invisible waters glided onwards, the surface behind seems to have fallen in, or, meeting with a substratum of a soapy nature, continued sliding down the adjacent declivities as long as it retained, or acquired, sufficient moisture to facilitate its motion”.
* This is an occurrence that happens, not infrequently, in the parishes of Saint Andrew and Saint Joseph, during the rainy season. In that part of the country, which, from its resemblance to the highlands of North Britain, is Scotland, the earth is composed of various strata obliquely disposed. The super-stratum is generally a rich loamy soil of saponaceous nature, which, being of no considerable depth, easily separates, when saturated with rain, from the substratum, which is commonly of a slippery chalk, flat stones, or loose, red gravel, and slides in large masses, with its growing produce, into the vallies below. Thus whole fields of sugar canes, corn, and potatoes have sometimes changed masters, and even lofty trees have been removed to a considerable distance without injury. Of this the curious reader may find instances related in Hughes ‘s Nat. Hist. Barb. p. 21.
Re the water, there is no ‘dirty’ water when it comes back on, as there usually is in a burst. Which makes me feel it’s just being switched ‘off & on’ for what reason, save water? It would be good if someone could tell us what the problem is! it came back on here between 8am & 11am & still on. I phoned Golden Ridge 3 times, all I got was a noise like a fax machine. Other numbers I’ve tried have been busy, so no luck with information at all.
Re Joes River Bridge, the Dr road has been used for a long time by Safari vehicles, when the bridge was closed we were told they would widen it, put marl down & it would be open in a week! its OK for 4WD, & one car width, but I got an old old car & cannot use that road at all, & once it rains its impassable.
CO Williams surveyed the area around the bridge for the Government, but were told it wasn’t ‘a priority’! Parks road is bad as well, I go East Coast Road or through St John, costing a lot more in gas & time. Cannot see the Government doing this job by August 5th! which year??
John
Would the creation of very large water tanks in certain areas alleviate these water scarce cycles?
If so, where would you put them and why?
I can’t answer your questions simply as I don’t have some key pieces of information …. how much time a particular pumping station does not deliver water and where that pumping station might be.
If the pumping stations are maxed out, extra storage capacity won’t matter.
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My understanding is that wells are distributed around Barbados and feed Reservoirs which then feed the consumer.
Some customers are on the main from the pump to the reservoir but most get their water from reservoirs.
The reservoirs are organised in 200 ft intervals. Each supplies customers who live up to 200 feet below them.
One obvious reservoir is at Fort George (398 feet) and it is fed from The Belle and Newmarket Pumping Stations but there are several others for example at Bowmanston, Ellerton, Rising Sun, Providence, Hanson Hill, Grand View, Gun Site Rd., St. Stephen’s Hill, Joes River Woods, Pumpkin Hill, Rock Hall, Pickerings, Warleigh, Apes Hill, Indian Ground, Mount Stepney etc etc..
A well supplies more than one reservoir ….. for redundancy and probably other considerations.
Some of the reservoir sites in the list above date from the late 1800’s but others are quite recent and reflect attempts to match supply to demand.
St. Stephens is probably the newest, but other new ones would be Indian Ground and Rock Hall.
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We do have a good water distribution infrastructure of the easily available naturally occurring resource but have not planned strategically for the time when the demand for the resource exceeds the supply of that naturally occurring resource.
I believe BWA fights and wins most tactical battles to meet existing demand created through GOB strategy ….. but some battles they will lose.
… yes, there are some leaky mains.
Long term, strategically, the war is probably lost … “where there is no vision the people perish” ….. but it wasn’t always so as the infrastructure shows.
I am yet to hear a local MP make sense where water is concerned. Google Singapore Water to appreciate where strategic thinking can lead.
Yesterday my water bill arrived, great, no proper water supply for a month & I still got to pay for it!