The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business

Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

THE Water & Sewerage Corporation’s main supplier says the cost of operating its two New Providence reverse osmosis plants has increased “tremendously” over the past year due to the rise in global oil prices.

Henderson Cash, Consolidated Water (Bahamas) general manager, said during a tour of its Windsor desalination plant that energy and other fossil fuel-related costs have been impacted by price volatility on global markets. It is understood the company is able to recover at least some of this through an energy “pass through” charge to the Corporation, for which it supplies all the water consumed by its New Providence customers from the Windsor and Blue Hills plants.

“We do employ some forms of renewable energy,” said Mr Cash. “We use a bit of solar for some of our systems and we exploit any input of energy. For instance, when we extract water from water wells, that’s the sea water, which is on our feet technically. We take that water and we purify some of it before we dispose of that. That is used for cooling requirements, and so we try to maximise that. We are always pushing that envelope.”

The Windsor Plant’s contract with the Water & Sewerage Corporation was renewed in 2018. Consolidated Water, which is listed on the Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX), has a 20-year agreement to supply the Water and Sewerage Corporation.

The Windsor plant produces more than 16m imperial gallons of water per week. Its wells go 300 feet deep to bring salt water from below ground to the plant, where it goes through the reverse osmosis process. Windsor itself employs 19 people working a 24-hour day, seven days per week, schedule in shifts.

Mr Henderson added: “If we take 100 gallons of seawater from the well, we get around 40 gallons of fresh water from the process. Sixty percent is brine, and it’s kind of the cutting edge technology just now.

“We take that water and we send it across the second RO (reverse osmosis) system to go up to 850 psi. This (Windsor Plant) goes up to maybe 200 psi. And so we further purify that water such that we’re making ultra-pure water, or what we call bottled water locally. That water is taken and blended by the Water & Sewerage Corporation to World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, and they send that to your home or my home for consumption.”