P.U.C. confirms poor water quality on San Pedro
The poem that goes Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink was written over two hundred years ago by English Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But the meaning is still fresh with residents on La Isla Bonita who became so outraged about the stagnant quality of water in San Pedro, they complained to the Public Utilities Commission a year ago. The P.U.C. which regulates utility has investigated and this afternoon issued a decision and an order to the Belize Water Services Limited and Consolidated Water Belize Limited in San Pedro. The chairman of the P.U.C., John Avery presented the findings and provisions of the order to secure the supply of potable water on Ambergris Caye.
John Avery, Chairman, P.U.C.
John Avery
“BWSL has consistently failed to meet the quality standard set by the Ministry of Health for supply of potable water to the public and Ambergris Caye. I would like to clarify that the Ministry of Health sets a number of different standards and BWSL has failed consistently to meet some of the standards not all the standards nuh. And B, where as CWBL has consistently fail to meet the quality standard set by the agreement for supply of treated water to BWS, again a similar thing applies Whereas there is not enough evidence to conclude that any third party is responsible for substandard quality of water supply from CWBL or for any deterioration of such supply. And where as the deterioration of water supply by CWBL to BWS coincided with a substantial reduction in the frequency of the replacement of membranes at the CWBL treatment facility. The commission hereby makes the following order in respect of the said complaint. Now these are actually, the following are actions required to be taken by the parties to ensure that we don’t have a similar problem in the future and to ensure that the public in San Pedro and Ambergris Caye continues to get an adequate supply of potable water. So we go to C, within one hundred and twenty days of the making of this order BWSL and CWBL shall jointly make a submission to the Minister responsible requesting that the area including and immediately surrounding the lagoon next to the CWBL treatment facility which serves as a source of untreated water for the extraction wells for the CWBL water treatment facility be it reserve for a forest reserve or national park as the case may be, pursuant to section twenty seven of the water industry act.”
We’ll have more on this story with comments from the BWS and CWBL in Monday night’s newscast.
