Duguid: Years of solid work on plant

It has taken years of work and hundreds of meetings to break ground on the multimillion-dollar tertiary water treatment plant, says Senior Minister in charge of Planning and Development Dr William Duguid.

He was addressing yesterday’s ground-breaking ceremony for the Barbados Climate Resilient South Coast Water Reclamation Project in Graeme Hall, Christ Church.

“This has been seven and a half years of solid work. It’s a bit of poetic justice because the difficulties that we experienced from this South Coast sewage project problem affected mainly the constituency of Christ Church South, but also the constituency of Christ Church West, the constituency that I’ve had the honour to represent since 2003.

“I started at the beginning and I worked through all the way to where we are today. Our next meeting next week will be No. 271. Can you imagine meetings every week to get to 271 meetings? Can you imagine trying to bring the EIB [European Investment Bank], the GCF [Global Climate Fund] and the IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] all together with all of their procurement rules and difficulties, and still being able to get to ground-breaking today?” he asked, adding this feat was proof of the importance and relevance of Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley’s travels.

Emergency fixes

Referring to the time raw sewage was flowing along the South Coast, Duguid said they enacted a series of emergency fixes to address the immediate problem, but that was always only the beginning.

“For some, it was out of sight and therefore out of mind, but not for the staff of the Barbados Water Authority [BWA] or this administration. So today, we break ground to finally bring that crisis under control with an upgraded South Coast sewage treatment plant.

Innovation and partnership

“This project is more than an infrastructure upgrade. It is a vision of resilience, sustainability and prosperity. It is about innovation and partnership. It brings together engineers, policymakers, farmers and citizens in a shared vision to safeguard water for all. By modernising our sewage treatment facilities to a tertiary-level plant, this water will no longer be effluent to be disposed of as far as possible off-site, but instead will become a valuable resource.”

The Senior Minister also gave updates on work in the north of the island, addressing the water quality and scarcity issues there.

“The plight of the residents of the northern parishes cannot be ignored, those who have suffered the scourge of brown water from their taps for far too long. A mains replacement programme commenced in St Lucy and, to date, 62 kilometres of mains have been replaced – 10 kilometres between 1997 and 2017; 22 kilometres between 2018 and 2024; and in 2025 alone another 30 kilometres were completed. The last 14 kilometres will be installed by the end of the first quarter.

“This mains replacement project, along with other treatment methods, including swabbing, flushing of the lines, cleaning of wells and installation of an ultra-filtration system in the second quarter of 2026, have been boosted by the refurbishment of the pump station at Alleynedale, the reservoir at Lamberts and the installation of a new tank at Half Acre.

Desalination plant

“These measures will be further augmented by the installation of a desalination plant at Hope, which should be up and running by April of this year,” Duguid said, adding any damaged roads would be fully reinstated without further prolonged delays.

Financing for the $220 million project will be via the Barbados Debt for Climate Swap through the GCF and the IDB. This debt is guaranteed through the EIB and the IDB.

Contractors on the project are the China Railway Shanghai Engineering Group, the Central & Southern China Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute Co. Ltd as well as GreenTech Environmental.

The event featured speakers representing the BWA, IDB and EIB, as well as Chinese Ambassador Zheng Bingkai, who all joined Mottley to break the ground. (CA)

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