Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has committed his Government to providing the entire country with potable water. He said attention will be given to the communities of Belles, Penrice and Sylvania.
“I have been told that Dominica has about ninety-six percent coverage so far, as access to potable water is concerned. The only communities in Dominica which do not yet have a reliable supply of water are Belles, Penrice and Sylvania. I say publicly that the Government of Dominica will make the resources available to DOWASCO to implement that water supply project that we can a hundred percent coverage in Dominica,” he said.
The Prime Minister said that his Government recognizes the importance of providing water to all communities across the country and over the next few years will work on making that a reality.
“When I go across Dominica, a number of villages, in Delices, Campbell, Penville, Warner, Marigot North End area, Bense which will start very soon in the next couple months, in the Morne Bruce area, the whole of Roseau, the whole of the west coast from Capuchin down to Scott’s Head there are complaints about the reliability or the lack therefore of the water supply. We have started addressing this in a frontal manner. We have no doubt we will complete the total rehabilitation of all the water supplies in Dominica over the next few years,” he stated.
While I applaud the initiative to provide water to 100% of communities in Dominica, I would like to see a change from the primitive type of treatment to a more complex treatment where all of the contaminants are removed. We need water treatment plants and not just water collection reservoirs. We have gotten stuck on chlorine as the only form of disinfection for our water. What if we have an outbreak of Cryptosporidium? Experience in an outbreak of Cryptosporidium in Minnesota in 1996/1997 showed that chlorine was ineffective in killing the spores of the organism and from the false sense of security provided by chlorine, many people were infected.
Dominica is a highly agricultural community with very high rainfall.Most farmers do not apply industry standards in the application of pesticides, weedicides and ferilizers. The result is that most of these chemicals enter our water systems. The kind of water systems we currently have in Dominica do not have the capacity for removing those chemicals; neither do they have the capacity for removing heavy metals. The inadequacies of our water systems are so clearly demonstrated after a few heavy showers. Whatever is washed into the water systems; the leaves, dirt, silt, oil from the roads, find themselves directly at the tap in our homes.So we are consuming, all be it from our water systems, pesticides, weedicides and fertilizers and other impurities and contaminants. Just imagine. Someone with malicious intents could easily poison us because we do not have a system that can provide early and easy detection of contaminants from our waters.
I say this to say that we need a well engineered water treatment plant that provides extended treatment of the water to remove all kinds of contaminants and not just heavy sediments. We need a system that incorporates the processes of sedimentation, flocculation, aeration, filtration and some acceptable form of disinfection. Note that I did not say chlorination because there are other alternatives for disinfection than chlorine.
Unless this is so we will never have water that is considered safe for human consumption. We may have water that is pipable but not potable.
Quite interesting. Potable water what a blessing. Indeed it isgood news to know that most of Dominica has pipe borne water. However there is a difference between pipe water and potable water one in layman’s terms is carried by pipes the other is drinkable and wholesome. Remember, water is life.
365 rivers and bloody expensive cost of water…. Theres’ no rivers here and we pay 80.00 for a 1000 gallons but we use rain water most. So never paid for water in 2 yrs
and at dowasco you pay 18.80 for 1000 gallons so explain to me how that is expensive
We need a discount on the water tanks and also get the white or clear ones.
boy i telling you… i am impressed.. but please PM… make sure dowasco remove all pipes from underneath our roads!!! i am so fed up of the ride… all the holes.
so where you want them to pass the pipes in the sky. what you should be saying is that public works should fix the roads much faster since we have already paid them to do so.
No just portable water mister PM, but clean water when it rains; storage tanks as well