Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

1. Au­thor­i­ty con­structs $25M plant but no wa­ter to treat

2. Cu­mu­to be­ing de­nied promised sup­ply

In the midst of a se­vere drought a $25 mil­lion Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant in­stalled at Cu­mu­to re­mains emp­ty al­most one year af­ter com­ple­tion. The two mas­sive tanks were in­stalled to treat and dis­trib­ute four mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day–to users in Cu­mu­to and en­vi­rons–with sup­plies from wells. How­ev­er, a Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­veals that to date, sink­ing of the wells, which was sup­posed to sup­ply the tanks with wa­ter, has come to a halt. The project, which be­gan in June of 2006 and was ex­pect­ed to take 15 months to be done, is yet to be com­plet­ed. The treat­ment plant was built by Uem Gem Ltd, while an­oth­er com­pa­ny was re­spon­si­ble for sink­ing the wells.

Tanks re­main emp­ty

When Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed Trac­tor Pool Road site on Wednes­day, on­ly road paving works were in progress on the com­pound of the plant. Apart from two buck­ets on site, both mas­sive tanks re­mained emp­ty. Asked if the plant was op­er­a­tive, one work­er who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty replied: "There is no wa­ter so ob­vi­ous­ly the plant can­not op­er­ate. If there is no wa­ter the plant can­not work." The hand­ful of res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty be­lieve their com­plaints for wa­ter have fall­en on deaf ears.

ABOVE: ?These two emp­ty wa­ter tanks sit on the ground of the treat­ment plant de­signed to make wa­ter avail­able to cer­tain parts of the coun­try.

Plant idle for a year

Ef­forts to con­tact chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Uem Gem, Raj Kush Wa­ha proved fu­tile. How­ev­er, a com­pa­ny of­fi­cial con­firmed that the plant has been ly­ing idle for the past year await­ing the pre­cious com­mod­i­ty. "It has been com­plet­ed just about one year now. The plant was built to re­ceive wa­ter, treat it, and then pump the wa­ter to those await­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion. As far as our scope of work is con­cerned we have com­plet­ed the job but there is no wa­ter to treat. I re­al­ly do not want to get in­to it, so I think WASA will be able to say why there is no wa­ter in the plant. We have to get wa­ter be­fore it is treat­ed; we have been wait­ing for one year now."

For­mer WASA chair­man: Where are the wells?

It was the then board head­ed by for­mer chair­man, Bar­ry Barnes that ap­proved con­struc­tion of the plant. Barnes, who is now an ad­vis­er to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Con­rad Enill, when con­tact­ed Fri­day, could not re­call which com­pa­ny was award­ed the con­tract to drill the wells. "If I am to re­mem­ber, there was a project for that area but it was not built in my time; it was built some time there­after. The con­tract may have been award­ed dur­ing my tenure but built af­ter I left. "If I re­mem­ber, for that project wells would have had to be drilled be­cause there was not any ex­ist­ing at that time. The project was geared to­wards im­prov­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter in the par­tic­u­lar area be­cause no one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed this cri­sis.

"The Wa­ter Re­sources Agency would have had to de­ter­mine a project for the wells to be drilled. In fact, there were wells the Unit­ed States Army would have drilled in Cu­mu­to dur­ing their time of oc­cu­pa­tion in 1945. There is a wa­ter ta­ble in Cu­mu­to and ob­vi­ous­ly the project was for the Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant to be served by the well field in Cu­mu­to. "I can on­ly make the as­sump­tion that the plant is emp­ty be­cause no wells were ever drilled."

WASA: Shod­dy work done

As to what went wrong to de­lay the op­er­a­tions of the plant, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) Ellen Lewis said the con­tract for the drilling and equip­ping of the wells in Cu­mu­to was award­ed to a cer­tain com­pa­ny (name called). The con­tract calls for the drilling and equip­ping of five pro­duc­tion wells and one ob­ser­va­tion well. Un­der that con­tract Cu­mu­to Well Num­ber One and Cu­mu­to Well Num­ber Two were drilled. "The con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed by the au­thor­i­ty due to the un­sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance of the con­trac­tor and the fact that the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency in­di­cat­ed that af­ter re-eval­u­a­tion of the Cu­mu­to aquifer the drilling, equip­ping and op­er­a­tions of five new pro­duc­tion wells in Cu­mu­to was not rec­om­mend­ed due to falling wa­ter lev­els. Oth­er sources of ground wa­ter are be­ing iden­ti­fied."

With re­gards to the de­lay of the project, Lewis said phys­i­cal works are still on-go­ing and is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed ear­ly next month, af­ter which the test­ing and com­mis­sion­ing of the plant would com­mence. Lewis said, "Af­ter suc­cess­ful test­ing and com­mis­sion­ing of the plant, elec­tri­cal, me­chan­i­cal, in­stru­men­ta­tion, and process sys­tems, the plant would be for­mal­ly tak­en over by the Au­thor­i­ty. "It should be not­ed that the Cu­mu­to Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant is one part of a larg­er wa­ter de­vel­op­ment project, and the op­er­a­tions of the plant de­pends on all the oth­er project el­e­ments be­ing com­plet­ed."