This past week and its flash floods may have reminded us of the expression “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink”, but it is a deadly serious matter when some areas of our island cannot be serviced by potable water for days on end and not a tanker can be seen to relieve the immediate problem.
It is a trite assertion to say that water is essential, and those who live in the worst affected parishes of St Thomas, St Andrew, St John and St Joseph must sometimes wonder if they are living behind God’s back, to use a most colourful statement which is pregnant with visions of neglect and deprivation.
Barbadians fully recall and understand what the authorities have been saying for sometime now – that we are a water-scarce island and the efforts at conservation and careful use of water have borne some fruit.
More careful efforts are used nowadays when washing cars and leaving sprinklers running all night, which was a bad habit of some in the past, is rare these days.
But it is truly accurate to say that you really miss the water when the well runs dry. The situation was dramatically brought home to many by the sight of a woman boarding a route taxi with two large covered buckets full of water. Similarly, car owners in St Peter have reported using their cars to carry bucket loads of water from standpipes back to their homes.
It is not a good advertisement for our country and its tourism-oriented economy, nor is it in the least desirable for the local community. Efforts must be made to seriously deal with the situation at once.
It is in this respect that we welcome the recently announced efforts of the Barbados Water Authority to place in appropriate areas a number of community storage tanks and to seek an additional four water tankers to bring the number of such tankers to 12.
The idea seems to be something like using such community tanks to top up the job of reservoirs, but tailored to the particular districts most affected by the water problem.
We recognise that water levels have been adversely affected by a number of factors mostly outside the control of the authority; but we are bound to ask about the forward planning and whether these measures could not have been implemented when it was becoming clear that some reservoirs would be compromised by the onset of those factors which have now created a crisis of sorts for the affected districts and the people who live within them!
It is impossible to overstate the case for a continuous supply of clean potable water. Equally, it is important that consumers understand that conservation by their households is as vital as supply.
Supply and conservation are symbiotic aspects of a reliable water supply system; and in any water-scarce country, forward planning becomes a necessary component, which water supply agencies like the Barbados Water Authority must treat with the highest priority.
Because our economy, our schools, hospitals, our hotels and indeed every aspect of what we do depends on water, we cannot wait until the wells run dry. We must also miss the water before the reservoirs run dry. Careful contingency planning based on discernible trends can sometimes eliminate the need for emergency measures.