Water supplies were interrupted for several days last week, leaving thousands of households without running water. Officials blamed an electrical glitch in the system.
"Since then, we have performed various tests to confirm that we have resolved all issues in its entirety and to make certain that we won’t have anymore problems of this nature," said General Manager at Consolidated Water Bahamas Limited Mario Bastian.
"There is some further testing that we will schedule at a convenient time for the corporation to make certain that this problem would not reoccur."
Mr. Bastian said when Consolidated Water "lost control" of the Blue Hills water plant two Thursdays ago, the company was in the process of installing a new UPS power supply to provide "clean power" for all of its control systems.
"Unfortunately, when the installation was completed and attempts made to start the plant again, we determined that the plant was experiencing numerous control issues," Mr. Bastian explained.
"We worked diligently with the suppliers of our control system via the Internet and on-line systems to troubleshoot the problem and we also brought in one of our IT specialists from our Cayman office and a control specialist from Venezuela. We were able to determine that there were one or two hardware issues with our control network and we quickly resolved those issues."
But, Mr. Bastian said the issues did not stop there.
"Further to this, we experienced software issues with our control systems," Mr. Bastian said. "We worked diligently with the author of that software via an online system and was able to get those resolved to finally bring the plant back online permanently [last] Monday."
Mr. Bastian said since then, various tests have been conducted and as of Friday he confirmed that all issues had been resolved. However, he noted that Consolidated Water is currently examining its entire control system to prevent a repeat of the recent water shortage dilemma.
He also indicated that the company has a disaster plan in place, which had been mobilized to restore the Blue Hills plant back to its normal operation.
Chief Executive Officer at Consolidated Water Bahamas, Frederick McTaggert apologized to WSC consumers who were forced to go without water for several days.
He said the electrical problem at the Blue Hills water plant was quite "unusual" and was the result of a number of minor issues that shut down the plant for several days.
"I am pleased to report that we resumed our normal operations at Blue Hills since earlier this week and we are running well above our guaranteed capacity at the plant to help WSC establish [its] storage levels," Mr. McTaggert said.
He said the company has also taken steps to ensure that such an issue does not reoccur by replacing faulty components and reevaluating how to further improve the control system at the plant to troubleshoot certain problems.
Minister of State for the Environment Phenton Neymour said WSC had to use a significant amount of its stored water during last week’s service interruption.
"At the time we experienced this challenge, the Water & Sewerage storage levels were approximately 30 million gallons and after the matter was resolved on [last] Monday, our inventory dropped to some 18 million gallons of water," Mr. Neymour said.
The state environment minister said once operations resumed the water storage level at WSC increased and approximately 24 million gallons of water was being stored, leaving WSC in a more "comfortable" position.
Mr. Neymour said the interruption in service is a wake-up call for the WSC and said it is important for officials at the corporation to learn from this experience and put a response plan in place that would eliminate future problems for consumers.
Consolidated Water supplies the Water & Sewerage Corporation with reverse osmosis water at its Blue Hills and Windsor water plants. The Blue Hills plant produces approximately 5 million gallons of water per day and the Windsor plant produces approximately 2 million gallons of reverse osmosis water per day.
