NIA moves to secure added water sources on Nevis
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis: The Nevis Island Administration is looking to the future to provide additional quality and reliable water sources on Nevis.
In that regard, Cabinet held discussions on Thursday March 9, 2006 with officials of Earth Water Global, a deep water drilling company based in Europe.
Premier of Nevis and Minister of Finance Vance Amory explained that the Administration had recognised the importance of water and in order to ensure that Nevis had other reliable sources of quality water available in the future, the Administration had moved to explore alternate water sources on the island.
“It is believed based on the technology which they have that they could access a suitable and large quantity source of water deep into the fissures of the rocks of Nevis and provide water,” he said, since the existing artesian wells on the island were closer to the surface and could not access the deep water.
According to Mr Amory, the deep drilling method utilised by a number of other countries worldwide including Tobago in the Caribbean, had been successful and it was something the Administration had interest in pursuing.
“This has been a successful method used in a number of countries around the world and in the Caribbean they have done work in Tobago to a high degree of satisfaction and it is something which we want to pursue.
“They will be making some further proposal to government for our consideration so that we could at least have all of the details to make a decision whether to go that way or to look at other sources.
I am quite impressed with what I am hearing from them and based on the Tobago experience and experience in other areas, it is something which we will be looking at quite favourably because we cannot continue to rely just on rainfall and on the normal replenishment of the aquifers which are near the surface.
We need to look at other sources and if this is a good source, I think it is something that we ought to be able to explore,” Mr Amory said.
He also explained that the need for a new source of water was important in light of the number of upcoming projects, which would involve the construction industry and later the domestic occupancy of the new buildings which would require additional water.
“We find we are getting to the rim and we need to satisfy ourselves that we have additional supplies of water to satisfy the demand and the additional demand that we foresee in the not too distant future,” he said.
The discussions encompassed topics including the environment, water quality, reliability which Mr Amory said was important to understand to ensure that the deep well drilling would not have a negative impact on Nevis.
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