Despite recent adverse weather conditions, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ water supply is not currently in danger.
Head of Water Resources at the Central Water and Sewerage Authority (CWSA) Danroy Ballantyne said that recent dry spells and abnormal heat brought to the authority’s attention, problems with some of their intakes.
“Presently, no. Two weeks ago we would have had some challenges where we had two weeks of dry spells, in addition to that dry spell was extreme heat, so there are few intakes that we could look at and say those are problematic. Montreal is one of those, Majorca and Dalloway,” he said.
The CWSA’s Water Resources Head then detailed what makes these intakes problematic.
“Montreal in the 80s, it was actually the banana boom and we would have had some encroachment to the intake and to the upper watershed and so there were significant damages to the upper watershed at that time, and so is also Dalloway to some extent. Not as extreme as Montreal but it is really affecting us now from so many years ago because it takes such a long time for a tree to actually get to its maximum stage,” he said.
According to the CWSA’s website, their Water Resource Management Unit operates and maintains, 10 Automatic Water Level Recording Stations, 5 Automatic Climate Stations, 26 Automatic tipping Bucket Rainfall Stations, 26 Ground water Measuring Stations, and 21 Flow Measuring Stations.
