Water co. will sue P.U.C. over rates
Belize Water Services Limited is currently in the middle of one of its most trying periods since taking over control of Belize’s water supply. What B.W.S. officials describe as “a major incident” on the Belmopan distribution system last weekend, left thousands of residents in the capital and surrounding villages high and dry. Torrential rains dumped in excess of seven inches of rain on the Belmopan area last Friday and Saturday, resulting in localized flooding that washed away several sections of water mains. Intake pipes were also affected by debris on the Belize River near Roaring Creek. Today B.W.S.L.’s chief executive officer, Martin Greenhalge and chief financial officer Alvan Haynes sat down with the press to offer an apology to the affected consumers and explain what the company is doing to regain some of its tarnished credibility.
Martin Greenhalge, C.E.O., Belize Water Services
“There was nothing else anybody could have done. We lost a number of fundamental assets due to the flooding that occurred. We took a very proactive approach in terms of measuring what do we do next, in terms of the steps. We¡¦ve got to look at quality and we’ve got to look at quantity. People want water, yes. But we must consider their health; we must consider the quality of the water we provide to them. Those were the decisions we made in a very proactive basis.”
Patrick Jones
“Do you believe that B.W.S.L. has lost a lot of confidence from the people in Belmopan and from consumers on a whole?”
Martin Greenhalge
“Oh I don’t believe that we have. Incidents like this cannot be predicted. Once cannot necessarily plan for every eventuality, when an incident like this occurs, it’s a natural phenomenon. We recover the situation as quickly as possible in the most responsible fashion.”
Alvan Haynes, Chief Financial Officer
“Not all areas of Belmopan were completely out. So we’re figuring about two thousand homes, two thousand households or connections were affected directly and then not all of them all the time.”
Patrick Jones
“In terms of dollars and cents, how much of a loss did the company suffer from this outage?”
Alvan Haynes
“We wouldn’t know that yet, but simply put, if Belmopan is out of water for three days, that’s like one tenth of the month, we can expect that we will loose ten percent of sales for that period, that obviously is never recoverable. We’re not bothered about. Usually, our primary concern is to make sure that the system is back up, the customers are getting the supply as required.”
Patrick Jones
“Is it conceivable that those same customers will be called upon to recoup some of what you’re now investing?”
Alvan Haynes
“Am, no. Absolutely not.”
Martin Greenhalge
“We have been extremely proactive in Belmopan. Virtually the entire management team has been up in Belmopan at some point during this week. Our staff have been there, an awful lot of leakage engineers have been up there to try and repaid all the mains. So we have been canvassing, we have been approaching people on a very proactive basis to understand their needs, their concerns during the entire time of this incident.”
Greenhalge says BWS technicians are now “on top of the situation” in Belmopan and that they are in the process of restoring capacity to the system. And while technicians seem to have regained control, company executives are preparing for another battle. C.E.O. Greenhalge announced during the press conference that B.W.S.L. is taking the Public Utilities Commission to court, seeking judicial review of the regulating body’s decision earlier this year to severely trim a request for a thirty-two percent increase in water rates. In the meantime, Greenhalge says negotiations are ongoing to secure the necessary permissions to start drawing water from a well in Teakettle village. The addition of this new water source, he says, will greatly assist the company in expanding capacity at its treatment plant in Belmopan.
