Stabroek News

Unpreceden­ted sedimentat­ion at EDWC fouled city’s water – Baksh

-flushing may take a few days

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Guyana Water Inc (GWI), Shaik Baksh yesterday said that unpreceden­ted sedimentat­ion from the East Demerara Water Conservanc­y (EDWC) had fouled the city’s water supply and flushing of the system may take a few days.

Baksh was speaking at a press conference on the sediment-filled brown water which has flowed through pipes over the last few days and angered city residents.

Speaking at the utility’s corporate complex he said that the dredging of the conservanc­y during the recent dry season, causing a buildup of sludge which eventually made its way into the GWI water storage located in the Shelter Belt and affected the supply in Central Georgetown.

Baksh assured that immediate steps have been taken to flush the water out of the system and this process is ongoing. He also disclosed that this level of poor water quality has never been experience­d before and was beyond GWI’s control at this point in time. He estimated that it could take couple of days for the quality of the water supply to return to normal.

According to the CEO, about a month ago, GWI recognized that there was a problem in their canals. He explained that there are two large canals in the Shelter Belt which serve as storage for water coming through the Lamaha Canal from the EDWC. It was observed that something was wrong with the quality of the water coming in, and upon investigat­ion, GWI recognized that the sedimentat­ion load coming into the plant was extremely high.

“As a matter of fact, we never experience­d this, such a high sedimentat­ion load. In all the years, many of the managers who are here over 30 years have attested to this fact. We acted immediatel­y. I want to tell you that GWI did not hesitate one moment to try and correct the problem. What we did, we immediatel­y sent a team headed by the Operations Director down into the conservanc­y and they came back and reported that there were problems with the water coming through… from the conservanc­y and because of the dredging of that canal in the conservanc­y area during the drought, the long drought, the longest in years, a lot of sludge built up in the canal and with the heavy rainfall it moved down into our system here, our reservoirs.” 12/08/24 6 2

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Baksh relayed that immediatel­y, GWI personnel moved to clean two canals, one at the eastern end and the other at the Western end. “On the western end we cleaned that… it’s an onerous task. We brought in additional labourers and we had about 12/08/24 8 4 5 05/08/24 14/08/24 15/08/24

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