Some residents in New Providence were without water yesterday evening after the Water and Sewage Corporation experienced two recent production failures at its Blue Hill Road plant.
According to a press statement, the failures began on Tuesday night around 9:00 p.m.
after a BEC power failure that resulted in the plant being down.
“These two recent failures have resulted in a fall in our NP storage
levels from 32.6 MIG on the morning of September 5 to 22.9 MIG morning
and the losses up to the re-starting of BHRO1 after 1PM this afternoon are
probably a further 2 to 3.0 MIG,” officials said.
The statement said to prevent any further losses and to begin the process of regaining
storage levels, the corporation commenced some immediate conservation measures yesterday afternoon and they will continue for the next several days.
“We will review the results in the morning and make further determinations
including issuing a Water Conservation Public Announcement which no one
likes but may be necessary,” last night’s statement said.
Meanwhile, the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) also apologised for the outages in New Providence on Tuesday night.
BEC officials assure customers that they have rectified the problem responsible for the outage and explain that it is due to a challenge in integrating the new 23.5 MW combustion turbine engine at the Blue Hills Power Station.
“Tuesday’s outage which occurred at 9:00 p.m. lasted less than one hour. Supply was restored to all impacted areas before 10:00 p.m. Wednesday’s outage took place after 3 p.m. and supply was restored to those affected areas within minutes,” BEC’s statement said.
“The corporation notes that these outages were the result of an unusual occurrence as the corporation has had minimal supply interruptions in New Providence this summer. BEC further explains that it has adequate capacity to meet consumer demand and continues to make improvements- including the new unit and the Blue Hill Power Station- to provide a consistent supply of electricity.
“Once again, the corporation apologises to those impacted by the outage and trusts that its customers are supportive in its ongoing effort to provide a safe and reliable source of electricity across The Bahamas.”
