The water and sanitation utilities have stepped up to provide their services during the coronavirus pandemic to keep their citizens safe and healthy.
*By Evan Cayetano
It is without a doubt that in this time of the COVID-19 water utilities responsible for public water supply are under increasing pressure to continue to provide this critical service. Even without a pandemic, water supply for utilities across the Caribbean has been challenged. These challenges have been well documented in various studies on water supply and the water sector in the Caribbean. There are also many studies on this topic which that are being produced right now.
Water supply is an essential service under the COVID-19 emergency, as part of the disaster response that all countries in the Caribbean have instituted. The call for adequate water supply is implicit in the call for the population to practice good hygiene, one of the most effective way to prevent new contagions along with practicing physical distancing. While communities that have not had reliable water supply are asking how can they comply with the requirement for good hygiene without this vital commodity, governments are increasing water trucking services and doing their best to give people assurance of water supply. But water trucking, while it is necessary to attend to immediate needs, is inefficient and costly.
It is therefore critical for water utilities to improve the efficiency of their existing operations. It is also critical for governments, as per UN Resolution 64/292. “The human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation”, to provide for the financial support required to meet the needs of those in the population with unreliable and no service. Before the COVID-19 emergency, the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA), with assistance from development partners including the IDB, CBD, PAHO, UNEP and others had prepared the Regional Strategic Action Plan for the Water Sector in the Caribbean (RSAP). This document, adopted by the High-Level Forum of Ministers Responsible for Water at the 2019 CWWA Conference, was largely in response to the realities of climate change to improve resilience of the utilities’ water supply infrastructure. As mostly small island developing states (SIDS), Caribbean countries are impacted by climate change by reduced water resources due to longer drought periods, increased storms and hurricanes, saline intrusion into aquifers due to over abstraction and sea level rise.
With COVID-19 now upon us, the CWWA is rising to the occasion and through its coordination mechanism is organizing to provide for support among utilities, sharing information and best practices, as well contemplating adjustments to the RSAP. Critical topics in a first dialogue held on April 3, 2020 include Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Requirements, Availability and Preparation for an Outbreak in the Workplace; Good Hygiene and Sanitation for Workplace and Treatment Facilities, Including Housekeeping Protocols/Routines/Sanitizing; and Supply Chain Management of Treatment. Associated development partners are also involved with CWWA to understand the needs and to assist with development of strategies and capacity building interventions.
This response has constituted an extraordinary effort, given the challenges that the water and sanitation sector faced before the pandemic.
Those challenges include: i) aging equipment and pipes with limited renewal of the water supply infrastructure (most of the newer pipelines are associated with housing development extensions of the pipeline); (ii) lack of a comprehensive asset management strategy and lack of adequate maintenance resulting in water treatment plants and related production facilities operating below design capacity; (iii) unmetered consumption and (iv) high energy costs for most utilities.
These problems have led to: (i) a gradual deterioration of the networks, with physical losses of production and high levels of Non-Revenue Water (NRW); (ii) unreliable supply, with significant shortfall in potable water supply during the dry periods; and (iii) low electromechanical efficiency of equipment, which, combined with the current operation and maintenance (O&M) practices and the high energy costs, increases operating costs.
The main causes for these problems are: i) lack of preventive maintenance over assets critical for the operation; ii) lack of a long term strategy for optimizing the life cycle of the physical assets; iii) lack of processes and practices for operating and maintaining facilities; iv) lack of capacity building programs; v) inefficient data handling systems for operation monitoring; and vi) lack of institutional learning strategies. Underlying these causes are also critical governance issues.
Given all these challenges, the Caribbean is doing its best to provide the services needed to keep citizens safe and healthy.The critical role of the general population is very much recognized and the CWWA, with support of its partners, are committed to public messaging to improve the publics’ understanding of the issues affecting the water sector in general, and particular focus on improving the efficiency of water supply in this time.
*Evan Cayetano is a water and sanitation specialist with the IDB since 1997. He has prepared and supervised loans and technical cooperation grants in the water sector for The Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. He is the Team Leader for the ongoing Regional Strategic Action Plan for the Water Sector in the Caribbean to Develop Resilience to the Impacts of Climate Change (RSAP) and the focal point for the IDB Water and Sanitation Division for the Caribbean. Mr. Cayetano holds a M.Sc. in Coastal Zone Management from Florida Institute of Technology, a B.Sc. in Marine Biology from Texas A&M University.
Covid 19 is adding another dimension to our continuing efforts to have resilient and sustainable water services in the Caribbean. Let us also not forget that many countries in the region are facing drought conditions as well. The economic downturn that is part and parcel of this emergency will have serious financial consequences for the sector, affecting on the one hand revenues from sales of water and ability/willingness to pay on the other. The argument that water tariffs are generally too low and need to be increased is likely to be drowned out. As countries move to kick-start economic activity (Barbados for example), in some cases through building projects, have the potential consequences been thought through – increasing demand for water from stressed resources, supplied by ageing water systems, being sold at low tariffs does not seem to me to be a sustainable model. Water services are but one part of a wider economy. This is an opportunity to be asking ourselves, what do we want our economies to look like? Because, what our economies will look like will influence what our water services will look like. We need creative future-orientated thinking, the sort of thing that foresight studies can help us with. Going back to the same old, same old is not going to help, we need to see this as an opportunity.
The challenges we continue to face in the water and sanitation sectors are not unique. Here in the BVI our water production is by desalination, but even with that process there are challenges, as plants do experience difficulties at times which impacts our water distribution service.
With regard to COVID-19 we have been observing social “physical” distance and we do have a No Mask No Service policy throughout the BVI. Given this policy service to a customer can be refused, We have been trucking water to vulnerable areas. All in all what is necessary to be done to protect us all, is being done,
What I am interested in understanding is the following: the waste of persons who are tested positive with COVID enters the sewerage network – this network is maintained by employees; is there need for concern that this virus which is introduced into the network can become a contributor to the spread of this virus? My team and I have come across articles that suggest this. We have therefore been extra careful operating the network.