INTERIM Management Committee Chairman of the Linden Town Council Orin Gordon says there is a serious common filtration problem with water distribution in Linden, with limited water in Amelia’s Ward.According to the IMC Chairman, not even air  is coming through the system in some places, while at Wisrock, it is the same situation.

An inspection visit to the new US$12.2M Linden Water Treatment Plant on Tuesday by Guyana Water Inc. Project Engineer David Merryl and engineer Khemraj Persaud was made possible after Gordon had written to Minister within the Ministry of Communities Keith Scott about concerns regarding its performance as it apparently was not producing an adequate volume of potable water for Linden residents.

Accompanying the IMC chairman and the GWI engineers were regional councillor Charles Sampson and Linden Town Council’s Environmental Health Officer (ag) Terone Lowenfield and her assistant Crystal Drakes, who took water samples.

The first stop was at the new water treatment plant’s reservoir at Amelia’s Ward, where it was noted that water was barely being sucked into the reservoir and GWI officials pointed out that there was a problem in the filtration system.

Gordon, acknowledging that they were facing a complex situation, said, “We have in Amelia’s Ward where we observe that there is limited water, in some cases some residents not even getting any air in the system at times, and that is a common problem. So whatever water they take in, they have been sending out and it is inadequate to the residents of Amelia’s Ward. We recognise that the problem has to do with the whole question of filter beds.”

WATER RATIONING
The IMC chairman observed that expectations are not going to be met and this has led to a false notion of what is going to be. This he said was in addition to “the fact that whatever designs had been put in place for the filtration system, and the construction for implementation were totally out of sync at this point in time. Not fully in sync with what is required at this point in time. So in essence, the people in Amelia’s Ward and by extension Blueberry Hill will have to continue to ration their use of water.”

Speaking at the visit at the Wisrock Water Plant where there is a huge new water reservoir, the GWI Linden Divisional Manger Rawle Friday said, “There are challenges that we are really trying to work on. There are standard operating procedures, but … once the turbidity changes, it determines what the operation will be. Once it is ideal then you have a different approach for the Wismar residents.”

Friday maintained, however, that, “The wells are performing to capacity basically. There are three wells but presently we are using two because of the ability of the plants at this point in time because of the bottlenecks that we have because of the ability to really utilise what we can source.”

And project engineer David Merryl remarked, “Because of the topography you might have to put it in silos. If you had a different plant in Wisrock, you tend to lose power and pressure. Generally the topography of Linden calls for separate plants in separate places.”

LONGER WAIT
Looking at the solution, Merryl said that in order to have a proper potable system in place the consumers in Linden “will have to wait a little longer.” But he pointed out: “If we can get it in the budget, we know the stated intention for it to happen in January, by February we go to bids, so then according to plans now, we can have the refurbishment as early as March.”

Gordon after some inspection at the new Wisrock reservoir stated, “While they are tinkering somewhat on what they will decide to do, because from what I am seeing that big construction at the top there really is like a grey elephant, not white, grey in colour. So in essence those two facilities [new reservoirs at the two sites] that we got there have not been maximised in terms of utilisation, and so they will have some work to do to get them up to maximising. This is because what GWI is saying, they are pumping straight from this old system here, straight into Wisrock, because they have to stop every minute.”

At that Wisrock location Merryl noted, “They are pumping into the chlorination tank, but every minute whatever they are doing it has to stop, be it cleaning and scrubbing and so on.”

According to Merryl, “This water system was designed for a lower usage of water. But in Linden the usage is high. I am not blaming the residents for this, because we got some problems with the filter bed. If you look at it like that, you will say the system could work but no, the reason why I cannot guarantee it, is because we got to find a way of bringing down the usage, which could very well be our wastage, not necessarily the residents. If we bring that down then we could be within the design parameters.”

However, the IMC head said, “Traditionally, consumption in Linden would generally be higher than in Georgetown. We know we have a problem with the filters, right now as I said we are trying to ascertain the issue of the sand, because our ability to test the sand is limited in Guyana. That’s one of the problems we got. We have taken the position that the contractor needs to produce the kind of sand that we want, if we can focus on that we could be able to solve (the problem).”

According to Merryl, “We still got some faith in the system, because if the reservoirs could work, it will save us a lot of money, especially in Amelia’s Ward. There is a clear flaw in the design and this is proving to be horrendous…”

By Joe Chapman