Our emergency water supplies from the desalination plants at Providence and Anse Boileau is set to double within 10 days following upgrades being funded by the United Arab Emirates government.
The UAE government has brought in three modern desalination plants worth a total of 3 million euros at the request of President James Michel as our water situation became critical and the existing plants’ capacity dropped by half.
Installation of the plants started yesterday at Providence where Home Affairs, Environment, Transport and Energy Minister Joel Morgan gave details about the upgrades being done.
He said the quality of water from the new plants is much better than that from those which existed before as the 200ppm salt content will be negligible compared to the 500ppm previously obtained.
Blending of water with some from the La Gogue dam whose capacity is now 54% will continue, he said.
Mr Morgan said the new plants were originally obtained from the US but we got them in record time from the UAE at Mr Michel’s request, adding it normally takes many months to get delivery of such equipment from any supplier in the world.
Although there is no room in the buildings at either Providence or Anse Boileau, the plants are of a quality that can run in open air where they are being installed.
When running normally the Providence plant should give 5 million litres of water but is now producing only 2.5 million. The new plants from the UAE will boost the capacity by another 2.5 million daily bringing the total to 5 million litres, while the new unit at Anse Boileau will add 1 million to the current 1.25 million capacity which should be 2.5 million if it were operating normally.
The poor performance has been caused by failed pumps which the UAE has taken for maintenance, meaning when they are re-installed the two plants will yield a total of 11 million litres of water per day.
Mr Morgan said water distribution to many parts of Mahe and some of Praslin is by bowser, “which is not an easy task” but which is being overseen at all levels for greatest efficiency.
He said far below normal rain has fallen this year due to changed climate causing surface sources to dry up.
It is not only Seychelles that is badly affected, he said, naming other countries in the region like Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania and others that are also experiencing major difficulties with water supplies.
He noted other projects to transfer water to the existing dams and to enlarge the one at La Gogue are still in the slightly longer term plan.
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