Plans in pipeline for solving water problems
Date: Tue 19-Oct-1993
Paper Page: 15
Publication: Daily Nation
ONE OF the main issues facing Barbados, is the availability of water, given
the seasonal and periodic fluctuations when it comes to replenishment.
This point was made by the Minister of Housing, Lands and the Environment,
Senator Harcourt Lewis as he addressed the closing ceremony of the Caribbean
Water and Waste Water Association (CWWA) at the Dover Convention Center
recently.
Senator Lewis described a portable water supply as one of the most valuable
natural resources, even more so in small developing states given their
physical limitations.
"Such states with their limited and fragile resource bases, particular
vulnerability to natural and economic shocks, and institutional and financial
limitations, face unique challenges in seeking a sustainable path of
development," Senator Lewis said.
He outlined some of the problems facing Barbados' supply as being: the use of
agro-chemicals, the growth in the number of private homes and their expansion
into areas previously used for agriculture and the growth in the scale and
diversity of industrial activity, which generates an increased range of
wastes, some quite hazardous.
"But," he said, "Barbados has long recognised the value and the
vulnerability
of the portable water supply. We have therefore adopted a number of measures
to address the potential threat to the integrity of this resource."
Senator Lewis however reassured the gathering of his ministry's commitment to
the institutionalisation of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a tool
of project and policy design and assessment in Barbados.