Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre says he is concerned about what is expected to be, from all reports, a terrible dry season. The message from the Prime Minister speaks primarily of water conservation and harvesting.
The Ministry of Agriculture and the Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO) have echoed similar cries over the past two weeks.
The John Compton Dam, the main source of the island’s water supply system, has for years been operating under subpar conditions and as such is thought to be ill equipped to handle a severe drought.
Prime Minister Pierre revealed that a number of options are being considered to adequately deal with the expected dry weather but insist there is much that St. Lucians can do to assist the situation. “I am convinced tat a lot of our problems can be solved by harvesting water. Talk about desalination…The government will give incentives for anyone who wants to go into that, even more incentives than what they get now. We are also going to be looking, in this budget, to providing incentives for people to harvest their own water.” The Prime Minister insisted that last week presented a perfect opportunity for water harvesting, with intermittent showers on a number of days. It was made clear that while there were some heavy showers it may not have been enough to affect the level at The John Compton Dam. The Prime Minister is convinced that St. Lucia is fortunate to have occasional rainfall even in a dry spell as compared to countries that go months without any downpour. He also explained that more benefits can be derived from water harvesting. “Let’s start the conversation about water harvesting, lets get our engineers together, lets get our water resource people together and if you think about it, it could help our debt situation if we can avoid WASCO having to borrow millions of dollars.”
Prime Minister Pierre identified Bermuda as a shining example that St. Lucia need to emulate in our fight against water shortages. He has promised to lead a delegation there to see firsthand how that country structured its water system.