Barbados Water Authority Announces Week-long Water Cuts for Southern Half of Barbados due to Pumping Station Repairs

By Sheria Brathwaite

Much of the southern half of Barbados will have to put up with a week of drastic water cuts as the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) battles to get one of its largest pumping stations back online. This weekend is the earliest that the Hampton Pumping Station could be working fully again, the BWA said Monday.

At a press briefing at the St Philip pumping station, BWA General Manager Keithroy Halliday said the repairs were intricate and barring any complications, the system should be on stream by late Friday.

“We’re targeting Friday,” he told reporters. “Even though we have worked it out that we should be able to aim for Friday – possibly Saturday – if we realise that we have to pause intermittently to make sure that the system is sufficiently replenished, and if it is that we encounter any difficulty . . . we will do so out of an abundance of caution . . . [but] if everything flows smoothly, the end of Friday is a good estimated time.”

Over the weekend, work to repair a failed pump and other compromised pieces of equipment was paused to allow the more than 10 000 customers who are supplied from Hampton to store water.

Halliday said this was done so parents would be in a better position to prepare their wards for school and to ensure the schools in the Hampton catchment area had adequate storage of water.

Hampton serves much of St Philip and St Joseph, and several Christ Church communities including Atlantic Shores, Callenders, Chancery Lane, Ealing Park, Gibbons Boggs, Goodland, Inch Marlow, Sayes Court, Seaview, Silver Sands, St Christopher, Wilcox, Durants and surrounding areas.

About 20 to 30 tankers, carrying roughly 1 200 gallons of water each, are to be deployed in the most affected districts, with priority going toward the elderly and most vulnerable households.

Recognising that the disruption in supply would be an inconvenience, Halliday implored residents to store as much water as they could even if it meant venturing outside of their community.

Responding to complaints that water tanker drivers were bypassing homes in the affected districts, the general manager said the drivers were instructed to follow a particular route and that it was a great undertaking for them to travel back and forth to communities, making five trips or more.

BWA officials gave a brief timeline of Hampton’s failure: During an inspection in November 2023 on the upper deck, it was realised that support structures were in a state of disrepair; a plan was devised to change the equipment in February 2024 so as not to affect customers during the holidays; in mid-December one of the pumps failed.