Mr. Christopher Richardson, Chairman of the Anguilla Water Authority Board, is urging all persons wishing to have connections, to the desalination water supply, to begin submitting applications to receive portable water at their premises in due course.
Mr. Richardson’s invitation comes as some of the new equipment, ordered to reopen the desalination plant at Crocus Bay, has already been installed and more equipment is to be shipped to Anguilla shortly.
Mr. Christopher Richardson
At present, workmen have installed six large filters in one section of the building, and two tanks have been located elsewhere inside to receive the desalted water to be pumped up the hill to the Water Authority’s distribution reservoir. The necessary piping should be received during this week and the engineers are expected next week to begin looking at electricity for the plant, according to Mr. Richardson.
“Within a week or two, the engineers will have the trains,” he continued. “The trains are actually the plants that will be taking the water from the sea to the customers. Those will be here in due time. Each train will produce approximately 263,000 gallons per day so we will be producing over 500,000 gallons a day. We consider that this will be more than enough to deal with our current customers. We have a little over 2,000 customers. However, within a few months, if the demand goes up, we can increase our capacity. What want to do, though [is] to increase our customer base. We are on a drive to ensure that we move back to our 4,000-plus customers. As a matter of fact, we want to bring everybody back to the trough. We will also wish for truck operators to have water also from us at Crocus Hill. That is something that we are going to put in place as well.”
Mr. Richardson, obviously noting that the planned island-wide water distribution system was taking quite a while, stated: “We are still on target in terms of turning on the switch for the end of September,” he added, suggesting that by then the desalination plant will be in operation.
Meanwhile, as part of the renovation work at the desalination plant, the Chairman of the Water Authority Board said that the inside of the steel building had been blocked in on the eastern side and on the southern side. This is to significantly reduce the noise level from disturbing CeBlue Resort and DaVida Restaurant in particular. The intention is to have the noise level at between 45 and 55 decibels which is legally the accepted level.
