A new reservoir is to be constructed at Balls Plantation in Christ Church.
The House of Assembly yesterday approved a resolution that will allow Government to acquire 40 932 square feet of land to build a 1.5 million gallon capacity reservoir which will support the existing Rising Sun reservoir in Christ Church.
Senior Minister Dr William Duguid, who introduced the resolution, said the project, which is expected to take five months to be completed, was a necessity and he appealed to Barbadians to take the matter of water conservation seriously and employ whatever water-saving methods they could.
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Transport Dr Rommell Springer also sought to impress on Barbadians the dire situation the island was in, as number 15 in the list of the world’s most water-scarce countries.
Springer warned this was a “key factor” in the “climate change discourse”, and outlined the action being taken to mitigate the water situation here. He said Government was currently engaged in what was projected to be an estimated $30 million investment in changing water mains.
“We are looking at an island-wide main replacement programme . . . we are not only building this one reservoir, we are also looking at perhaps another ten reservoirs and several steel water tanks,” Springer said.
Giving a stark idea of “how bad” the water situation in Barbados was, Springer explained that the standard for any country was 1 000 cubic metres of water per person.
He said: “We are currently at 310 and I have seen numbers around 390 cubic metres of water per person . . . a third of where we should be as it relates to water.” (GC)
