Expert Says B.S.I. Water Treatment Exceptional

The Belize Sugar Industry has responded to a report that the mill is largely at fault for the state of the New River. B.S.I. is refuting any claim that the factory is permitting untreated effluent to enter the New River ecosystem.  On Monday, B.S.I. hosted Friends of the New River for a tour of their treatment facility.  Today, Seidy Lienez, Regional EHS Manager at A.S.R./B.S.I. spoke to the media about the tour. The company also hosted Patrick Cyr, Industrial Waste Water Practice Leader at Woodard and Curran, an expert hired to evaluate the efficiency of treatment plant. Cyr spoke about what B.S.I. is doing.

Seidy Lienez

Seidy Lienez, Regional EHS Manager, A.S.R./B.S.I.

“I think this is a misconception and that’s why we open the doors, you know we started the question with Friends of the New River because we want people to see we don’t discharge untreated material into the river. That’s not true, so that was actually something that we wanted to debunk, you know, so that people can actually see that we do have a treatment system, we do have a cooling system and all of our effluent discharge to the river has to pass through this series of treatments before it is actually discharged into the river.”

Patrick Cyr

Patrick Cyr, Industrial Waste Water Practice Leader, Woodard & Curran

“They hired us to evaluate the efficiency of the treatment plant. It’s a very robust treatment system from what I am seeing. They collect all of their processed waste water from the plant, from the sugar cane refining process, goes down into a holding pond which then goes into a lagoon system then into the cooling ponds and then a cascading waterfall and then into the river. It’s a, like I mentioned, it’s very robust. It does four primary processes in the treatment of waste water. It will remove the organics that’s in the waste water, it will remove the solids that are in the water, it will cool the water and then it will add dissolved oxygen to the water as well prior to discharge in the New River. The organics that are removed is well over ninety-nine percent within the treatment plant which is exceptional for a treatment plant like this. It has abundant capacity to be able to handle the organics that come down abundant settling capacity to remove the solid material and then also has the four cooling ponds as well.”

Friends of the New River has published the visit to B.S.I. on its social media page saying it will publish a report later this week.