Better water supply in the pipeline for Brackers

The Water Authority has said it is currently putting in place a series of measures to alleviate the problems surrounding water supply on Cayman Brac. They said that the problems were due to increased demand during the dry season for piped and trucked water, along with an increase in what they termed “unaccounted for water” on the distribution system.

Due to the high demand, water production plants had to be operated continuously with less down time for maintenance, they advised. In order to carry out maintenance to improve the production capacity of the reverse osmosis plants, the plants needed to be taken offline, with a consequential reduction in volume of water in the reservoirs. The Water Authority said this meant a careful balance needed to be struck between continuing operation of the plant and taking it offline to improve production capacity.

“Further, the dry season has impacted the abstraction well of one of the RO plants, requiring very frequent maintenance that in turn affects ideal production capacity,” they advised. “The prefilters that treat the water from this well must be changed frequently resulting in additional downtime of the plant. This challenge will be addressed by taking actions to improve the performance of the well.”

In the short-term, the Water Authority said it was taking action to increase production capacity, increase storage, locate and repair water loss on the distribution system, manage trucked deliveries, encourage conservation, and reduce overall usage.

“These actions will help to alleviate the current strain on the system and build up reserves for a return to normal operation,” they stated, adding that these measures had already improved reserves.

In the medium-term, the Water Authority planned to double the capacity of the main reverse osmosis plant to further increase production capacity before the end of 2023, continue water demand management, and accelerate preliminary hydrogeological investigations for the Bluff Water Works Project.

In the long term they plan to complete the construction and commissioning of a new, larger plant as part of the Bluff Water Works Project within the next 2-3 years while at the same time continuing the pipeline extension project in Cayman Brac.

They apologised to customers for not currently meeting water demands and not providing the level of service that they had come to expect and asked customers to conserve water as much as possible, by fixing leaking taps and cisterns, watering crops during the early morning or late evening, and using water-guzzling appliances conservatively.

Trucked water customers are encouraged to manage their storage and place orders prior to their storage supply being exhausted.