Has the time come for the authorities to divert traffic from driving through sewage water on the South Coast of Barbados?
Does commonsense require citizens to avoid the use of the road?
Should eating establishments be closed in the area of the sewage leak?
What about the two bus stops located in the area adjacent to Lanterns Mall and Tapas/KFC where school children and adults like are spotted daily waiting for public transport?
What are we waiting for?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
When will the problems be solved?
That will determine if there is a shutdown or not!!!
Remember GOB’s efforts to compensate businesses for loss of trade when the system was built!!
The GOB is broke!!
Shutdown is unlikely, regardless of how much sense it may make.
I would say yes but that is not feasible.
In front of FCIBC, Rendezvous……..motorists on the left going up from the gas station…… have to wait to swing off the sewage spewing up from the manhole.
In front of Lanterns, motorists swing and turn to avoid the sewage and end up having to avoid dropping into the large potholes.
If the area is quarantined, what would residents do? The businesses have suffered more than enough. It appears that no one seems to have an answer to the problem. No one. At this point, the government does not even seem to care, they seem to be hoping that the problem magically goes away.
In the meanwhile, this problem is getting worse by the day yet the PM could find time to talk shiite on Sunday.
I hope the voters punish him with the same laughter he got on Sunday. Has David Estwick said a word yet?
Is Sandals responsible for aggravating this mess?
Prodigal Son February 6, 2018 at 10:30 PM #
Is Sandals responsible for aggravating this mess?
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Nothing surprises me in Barbados but I can’t see how Sandals would impact if the problem as I understood it from the minister is “fractured” pipes and concrete casements.
If you look at the roads from the plant to Oistins, there seems to be no problem.
The problems seem to be at the low points in the system from the plant to Bridgetown.
Even if Sandals adds to the load, it can only output a volume less than the water it consumes and for the moment, there does not seem to be any complaints about people going without water.
It boggles my mind why folks still go to use the bustop right there by Laterns. Its not like the other two are so far away.
The system was already overwhelmed……….the massive expansion of Sandals had to compound the problem bearing in mind there was a lack of maintenance!
At this point, the government does not even seem to care, they seem to be hoping that the problem magically goes away.
Or another way to put it: The government don’t know whether to sh!t or go blind. Problem is it can’t sh!t because that would add to the gallons of sh!tty, malodorous mess that is spilling out onto the street, so it has no course of action but to take the “go blind” option, pretending it can’t see why another of those little transitory inconveniences is causing so much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the populace (excluding DLP yardfowls).
OK, looks like the latest stab in the dark to fix the problem will be to dig some big pit toilets (300ft deep) to store the oveflow. First test well is to be dug at Graeme Hall.
Another failure
Barbados Water Authority admits interim sewage plan not working
Following a meeting today among top officials of the BWA, the Ministry of Health and the Environmental Protection Department, BWA General Manager Keithroy Halliday announced that 300-foot injection wells must now be dug as a matter of urgency as time was running out.
โThe injection wells were part of what we had projected for the medium term and are now being brought forward as of necessity as much as the interim measures are no longer sufficient to contain the effluent as we would want, to keep the overflows to an absolute minimum,โ Halliday told Barbados TODAY this afternoon.
โWhat is happening is that there is a worsening of the situation and because of what we see as additional water intrusion which adds to the existing challenge,โ he stressed, adding that this had resulted in more back up than expected.
Faced with this dire situation, the water executive said the immediate rescue plan would now involve digging several deep emergency injection wells, which must however be done under special conditions prescribed by the Ministry of Health.
The BWA took us back to community stand pipes last year
Now we are going back to community pit toilets….
the very thing that the sewerage plant was installed to avoid.
60 years of free eddykashun has brought us full circle.
…and yet wunna people continue to hope that we are on the right track…
What more proof wunna need …that we are on the road to Death, DOOM and Destruction?
…a sign from Heaven?
How can the minister, the CEO, senior technical officers, the government all remain in position while this humiliating mess continues? This alone, as if proof was needed, demonstrates that Barbados is not a first world nation; it is not even a middle ranking nation. Just compare Barbados with St Lucia or any of the fast-developing Caribbean nations.
Yet, as we face a decisive general election, the nation is playing at three monkeys: can’t hear, see or speak.
Where are the grand old people of the party, the former leaders and ministers, don’t they offer advice to the prime minister, minister of finance and other senior ministers, or are they simply ignored? If they are, then do they have a duty to speak out, or des party loyalty come before the nation?
โThe injection wells were part of what we had projected for the medium term and are now being brought forward as of necessity as much as the interim measures are no longer sufficient to contain the effluent as we would want, to keep the overflows to an absolute minimum,โ Halliday told Barbados TODAY this afternoon.”
How could they not have used COMMONSENSE to foresee this…contrary to what the likes of GP thinks, having degrees and letters trailing after your name, does not mean you can foresee shit or have the commonsense to avoid it.
The old ass idiots are the ones causing this mess with their backward thinking and useless 1950s philosophies..
…. I bet 20 year old students would have created a definitive solution to this government created mess if they were ever given a chance.
Steuupps
These 2 comments make more sense than the shit being spewed from so called experts.
The present government and their politically appointed and chosen yardfowls, do not know what they are doing, have not known what they have been doing for 10 years, if they screw this up, they could kill off a large cross section of the population. …with disease.
“Tony Webster
February 7, 2018 at 6:24 am
If we โinjectโ sewage into deep limestone- which is porous- and the stuff is pumped in there under pressure, there is obviously a high risk that it will find its way into our aquifers, from which we draw potable water. As I recall, we have six distinct aquifers, from which we pump water daily. These may be separated by elevation, or cap-rock, or sea-water intrusions, but they are certainly NOT โwater-tightโ one from the other. Further, unless we were to fortuitously find vast empty caverns in the limestone, and drill exactly into theseโฆwhere will the sewage go? It certainly might temporarily ease the pressure at Worthing, but it will not just disappearโฆ just another sticking-plaster to a humongous sore.
It would make more sense to just pump it 15 miles out into the sea.
Buy shares in Bottle water companies folks; and start โharvestingโ your rain-water too. And for Godโs sale: eat less. You knowโฆless input..less output.”
“luther thorne
February 7, 2018 at 2:35 am
I am very concerned about what I heard on VOB yesterday when it was explained that wells to be dug will contaminate the Barbados water table for ever.
I know people who are preparing to leave Barbados if there is no change in Government. This thing about the water being contaminated for ever scares me. I shall emigrate to Malta or to Vanautu , Trinidad or New Zealand if they sink those insertion wells. Bajans need to stop these people before they totally destroy Bim.”
Bush Tea February 7, 2018 at 12:19 AM #
The BWA took us back to community stand pipes last year
Now we are going back to community pit toiletsโฆ.
60 years of free eddykashun has brought us full circle.
……………………………………………………………………………..
Correct Bushy, and all because of 16 fools, elected by 80,000 idiots and tolerated by 280,000 sheep.
Universal Suffrage my ass.
Now we have a fantasy budget document laid before our best and brightest in Parliament with no possibility of it ever working other than to drive more local and foreign investment from this country with its utter stupidity.
Meanwhile the boss fool Fumble brays that we need our privacy protected with regard to phone tapping one week after his gov’t introduced fascist powers for the police.
As moronic as the Stuart gov’t is, we are bigger fools for sitting and taking it. What a joke of a people we are.
There was never any chance of economic recovery under Fumble’s Fools!
@GreenMonkey February 6, 2018 at 11:35 PM #
โOK, looks like the latest stab in the dark to fix the problem will be to dig some big pit toilets (300ft deep) to store the oveflow. First test well is to be dug at Graeme Hall.โ
And no one is prepared to use their commonsense and ask these shitehounds where would the untreated โwateryโ effluence end up, if not in the coastal water to kill off the already dying coral reefs or in the aquifers that support the underground water storage interconnected system.
Who will be given the contract to dig further into the Treasury of special projects funds to further destroy the reefs and underground water of Barbados? Would it be a choice between Hobsonโs white horses branded M&M in assoc. with Inn(o) technology?
The poor GM must be shitting bricks since taking up his post and wondering what a shitty mess he has landed in.
Donโt be surprised if he soon finds himself at odds with his political masters and tell them in true Trickidadian style to โpiss offโ.
What shutdown what? Do you not recognize that the USA issued advisory is the major problem, if you listen to the reactionists we elected? Rather than focus on this south coast mess ( no pun intended ) we are about to be steered back into 2007 and wire tapping allegations so as to launch a full scale attack on Mia Mottley. That this Freundel Stuart administration still thinks that it can win another term in office clearly tells you what they really think about Bajans.
Prodigal Son February 6, 2018 at 11:03 PM #
The system was already overwhelmedโฆโฆโฆ.the massive expansion of Sandals had to compound the problem bearing in mind there was a lack of maintenance!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Imagine if we had a Hyatt, compliments of the DLP!!
David Commissiong did us a favour through our dysfunctional law courts.
I said years ago that construction is a dead end activity in this economy because water is a naturally limiting factor!!!
An understanding of this simple fact of life would have prevented the need to access the law courts because the GOB would have pursued other avenues.
I think what has happened is the sewage system is at the end of its lifespan.
We can fix parts but there is a fundamental design flaw which needs to be understood and addressed.
Something went wrong at the beginning for the lifespan to be so short.
Sandals will also probably be a victim of whatever screw up went into the implementation of the sewage system.
…. but half of the delivery system, Oistins to the plant, seems to be working which suggests we can get something right …. at least for now!!
Regarding the proposed wells ….
I seem to remember the “desalination” plant is using deep wells to dispose of the saline water (effluent if you like) it produces in purifying the million or so gallons it contributes to the water supply.
Need to check.
Perhaps the idea for the sewage wells is informed by this experience.
It is more likely these, if they exist, would contaminate the underground aquifer at the Belle, Codrington and Newmarket but I feel it is more likely that the natural pressure of the rain water constantly going into the limestone will act to force it into the sea.
Would be interesting to know of the experience of the “desal” plant.
But it is a fact that in the design of the Sewage Plant, the preferred option of disposing of the effluent was to send it out to sea, not to down into the ground.
…. and of course there is also the oil wells drilled all over the St. George Valley which also have the possibility of impacting our water …. an issue raised from the beginning when oil was first drilled in Barbados.
I said years ago that construction is a dead end activity in this economy because water is a naturally limiting factor!!!
An understanding of this simple fact of life would have prevented the need to access the law courts because the GOB would have pursued other avenues.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It isn’t only GOB, it is also the private sector.
Both are blind to basic realities of life and proceed as though it is business as usual.
We reached the end of easily accessible water in the 1990’s.
We are in a mess today because we kept investing efforts in a dead end activity instead of looking for different ways of building on what we had back then.
@ Hamilton Hill February 7, 2018 at 7:32 AM
โRather than focus on this south coast mess ( no pun intended ) we are about to be steered back into 2007 and wire tapping allegations so as to launch a full scale attack on Mia Mottleyโฆโ
Smart Hamilton, you are so perspicuously insightful in being able to identify the nuggets of electoral strategy encased in the shitty crap of parliamentary debate.
Why havenโt the alleged perpetrators of this serious crime not been charged and brought before the Law courts? Hasnโt the so-called irrefutable evidence been garnered over the last 5 years (at least)?
What about allowing MAM to renew her licence to practice Law in 2018 without the requisite LEC?
It seems as if OSA is being more than a Quisling in this matter. Is he now a full-blooded turncoat from โredโ to blue-blooded โYellowโ?
Didnโt he take full responsibility for all things (good, bad and indifferent) which occurred under his watch?
OSA needs to go to the law enforcement authorities and demand that his sullied name be cleared from any washing of his administrationโs dirty linen in public.
But before he goes he must take a read of the verbal dressing down he received in Parliament sometime in 2009 from the current holder of the same position he once held.
He should also listen to the recording of the political speech which โallegedlyโ besmirched his character as a human being and denigrated his capacity as a competent leader and delivered at a political mass meeting in Brittons Hill in the final days of the February 2013 electoral campaign.
Arenโt you all a bunch of wild boys (and girls) behaving like a classroom of classless clowns in a poor-rakey parliament? (OSA words, not BUโs)
@BushTea, you call them (rather deftly actually) ” community pit toilets” and note that these were “the very thing that the sewerage plant was installed to avoid”.
However, the BWA top boss noted rather interestingly that these community pit toilets aka “injection wells were part of what we had projected for the medium term”.
Has this been explained properly and I missed it?? … when he says it was a mid-term solution does he mean that this effluence problem has so flummoxed his team that they actually have a three stage long term band-aid of a plan to contain the problem because – presumingly- if they retain power it will take another three years and more to fix this??
We are engaged in the success of the well digging itself but do we realize exactly what THAT really suggests!
And BTW as much I agree with you, @Miller and @Frustrated the fact is that those pit toilet suck wells dotted the island previously… yes the process was stopped for valid reasons but surely a few properly planned wells (oxymoronic with the DEMs I realize) can be temporarily effective.
@Hal, you are dann right that “party loyalty come before the nation”. Is that not seen with the cadet wannabe general cum president in the US. How many respected and sage party elders have cowed in silence before him.
How many “grand old people of the party, the former leaders and ministers” acted with all deliberate wisdom to forestall PM Cameron path down Brexit…. yes I know that was a complex issue but the point is that today, yesterday and the days before always saw a party devotion that caused deep seated problems…today’s rabid tribalism is a problem definitely….but why is lil BIM taking the brunt of your screeding.
I am confident in my Bajan folk that they will reset and dump these vagabonds…didn’t Barrow and Tom and Grantley get squahed when Bajans did a reset….
There must be one NOW….have some faith in your people.
@ John February 7, 2018 at 7:59 AM
โSomething went wrong at the beginning for the lifespan to be so short.
Sandals will also probably be a victim of whatever screw up went into the implementation of the sewage system.
โฆ. but half of the delivery system, Oistins to the plant, seems to be working which suggests we can get something right โฆ. at least for now!โ
That is what you are wishing and hoping for; and good luck to you.
If the plant is not working properly donโt you think that it should follow there would be backup of sewage which could eventually put excess pressure on the line from Oistins and- braggadung Johnson in true Bajan style- the Oistins line collapses and vomits its effluent in Maxwell pond.
As a loyal son of the Bajan soil you are quite aware of the well-known saying that where there is smoke there is more than likely fire lurking.
Its relevance to the South coast fiasco can be expressed by saying โwhere you smell shite (Irish for shit) there must be an overflowing pit toiletโ; even if buried underground but ready to explode in the faces of the stupid authorities.
There is a lot of eating in Oistins. So there must be a lot of defecating and urinating mixing with a lot of cooking oils and fats.
jack ass
why dont you leave the “the cadet wannabe general cum president in the US” alone? he is doing a much better job than shitbama did fighting the obstructionist dems the rinos and the ignorant and extremely biased press.
the man has foritude!
Rather than shutdown the whole south coast maybe smaller sewage plants need to be erected along the coast to deal with the problems.
That means land acquisitions and compensations to a few owners.
Town Planning should probably have been doing this over the past 50 years instead of creating the jumble/jungle.
Primary and secondary treatment can be done along the coast and the effluent then goes to a tertiary treatment plant at Graeme Hall or wherever.
The tertiary treated water is then available for reuse.
Take a drive through St. Lawrence Gap …… it is horrible, one wonders how the systems that maintain its functionality are planned and implemented.
If the plant is not working properly donโt you think that it should follow there would be backup of sewage which could eventually put excess pressure on the line from Oistins and- braggadung Johnson in true Bajan style- the Oistins line collapses and vomits its effluent in Maxwell pond.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So are you admitting the plant is working properly?
… and … go take a look at Maxwell Pond, it have in a building, looks like appartments!!
Town Planning in shambles!!
The point is that some of the system appears to be working, and it looks like more than 50%!!
de pedantic Dribbler February 7, 2018 at 8:48 AM #
Just talking to a friend who returned to California a few days ago and you should hear his verdict on Barbados. If only Bajans can hear what people say about them.
All of the DLP RED Herrings will be in play now until elections to distract from issues like this one!!!
@Dee Word
The government through the PM is on record as stating assistance is being sought from the IADB. How long do you think it will take to mobilize to disbursement? Until that time is reached months from no we must have short term or bandaid measures to mitigate. We up shit creek.
Chicken Barn is closed down.
The lot is not being used.
Compensate the business (need to anyway) and the owner of the property (need to anyway).
Hotels routinely treat their own sewage with package plants.
Put a couple of small plants in the vacant lot and treat what sewage is coming up from Bridgetown to the existing plant.
If necessary, acquire the adjacent properties.
David February 7, 2018 at 9:25 AM #
@Dee Word
The government through the PM is on record as stating assistance is being sought from the IADB. How long do you think it will take to mobilize to disbursement? Until that time is reached months from no we must have short term or bandaid measures to mitigate. We up shit creek.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
They are either asking for assistance to fund the diagnosis of the problems or fix the problems.
More likely they are seeking funding for the diagnosis of the problems!!!
If the IADB funded the system in the first place and the result is a lemon, it should be falling over itself trying to solve the mess it created because liability might rest with it!!!
ALL I can say is this situation must be a JOKE, no intelligent government officials, competent engineers, health authorities would act this way UNLESS THEY ARE TOTAL MORONS.
@John
The IADB was very clear in the original documentation operational maintenance was key. Did we comply?
Is there a design specification in the original documentation you have?
If there is, does the final product meet those specifications?
Rather than shut down the whole south coast, reduce the amount of water going there either by water rationing or a reduction of pressure.
That will immediately reduce the sewage generated.
How was the material for the construction of the system supplied?
Were for instance, the pipes supplied through a Miami Company owned by local political interests?
Was the material up to standard?
We all know how the system works!!
I was told of a contract to supply pipes to the BWA that went to a particular company locally but the pipes were not up to standard!!
That was years ago.
The BWA then wasted resources replacing it.
We have a fundamentally corrupt system.
My bet is we are watching the results on the South Coast!!
Government projects are supplied by Government suppliers!!
From the toilets at Dodds to the pipes at BWA!!
John February 7, 2018 at 10:10 AM #
The situation is snow so urgent and the health risks to the nation so acute, that we should outsource this problem. If BWA technicians and the politicians knew what was wrong and how to solve it they would have done that weeks ago. They do not. Stop talking and act.
OK Mr Blogmaster, I hear yah…. so do you think that the IADB is the needed paddle … or will these folks in fact not break off piece of the paddle and make their rowing out of the creek that much more difficult.
@Hal, actually I realize very much how badly we are now dismissed as having over inflated egos, are ignorant and now literally full of shitttee.
Multiple generations strode the region and the world with a perspective that as small as we were we were good enough to be selected to sit at the head of the elusive caribbean federation…. that…
We had in our midst from this small nation the greatest cricketer in the entire world… and that…
We sent our citizens around the place to teach and maintain order because other nations saw us as well educated and organized…
Now they just see us as another corrupt, wayward , ineffective bunch of jokers who can’t clean our own shitttee.
Not to mention that now… we have one of our best and brighest Black scholars who finds it instructive or amusing or edifying to him in some strange sense of self worth to disagree so disdainfully and with such disrespect with the first Black US president to call him by disgusting pergoratives…. and accordingly extoll the virtues of a white man with an unquestioned history of racist behaviour…
So yes @Hal I too speak with many Bajans and others and coupled all together it’s clear that multiple future Bajan generations better brace for being ridiculed as pompous, educated back ends of a smelly donkey !
I gone.
It isn’t to say that our problem is unique and no one has ever dealt with it before.
Whatever it is, corrosion, corruption, lack of maintenance the world has been there and done that numerous times.
I would hate to think corruption is involved but the longer it goes on, the more that suggests itself.
People from outside might expose it!!
@Hal Austin February 7, 2018 at 10:14 AM #
Was the “snow” a misspell or are you saying the situation is frozen, either works for me.
@Dee Word
Wouldnรขยยt the scope of the IADB intervention/project not be a function of requirements to remedy the problem and what the country can afford? There must be a happy balance to keep the pragmatists happy.
Wily finds it necessary to add a little levity to this serious situation as his blood pressure gets as high as the new Space X heavy lifter rocket. Wily finds levity is as good as blood pressure meds. It’s unfortunate that local government appears to be using a super strength weed, obviously being imported from an offshore source as Barbados is not capable of organizing and growing such goooooood weed.
Wily Coyote February 7, 2018 at 11:18 AM #
It should have been ‘now’. The only thing that is frozen is the brain of the person n charge.
d p D at 11 :06 AM
Is it my imagination ? Or are you letting the Silly Season epidemic get to you.? The only thing that man has to fear is fear itself. Cool it, man. We have been so accustom to a high and consistent level of perfornance that we cannot tolerate a little blip on the chart. We are only human. Time longer than twine.
Blah, blah, blah
Cut out the old talk and fix de ting
Degrees and titles but cannot fix ‘shit’
Get outside help if necessary
John February 7, 2018 at 11:10 AM #
Do we have a breakdown of the property and other assets owned by the Anglican and Methodist churches?
Cheers
I would like to remind one and all that โGroundhog Dayโ was Feb 2 and we are just repeating what we have said over and over for the umpteenth time. The Govโt and I include the Cabinet, the bureaucrats, the technical personnel and the PROโs donโt know which end of the shitty stick is up. Are there any other ways that one can say -sewage is flowing in the streets or the area smells like a concentrated hydrogen sulphide dump or this or that Minister/BWA exec etc. donโt know their ass from a hole in the ground or when is it going to be fixed?
Govโts have fallen for less and its time that the jokers taking up space in the H of A be sent on an extended holiday, lets hope that someone competent takes the reins, but hope springs eternal in the human breast.
A whole prison burned down, not one prisoner escaped and whilst being housed temporarily at another site a new prison was built with the only complaint being the cost. Yet the ability of the person who managed this event to lead is being questioned. Bajans are the best.
@Enuff
โTouchousโ arenโt we? BTW who managed this event again? I am getting a bit senile but a little bird just reminded me that an individual was conspicuous by their absence as a witness to the subsequent Commission of Inquiry.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.