Long-delayed EE sewer system promised soon

Elected leaders and other residents gathered in Long Swamp on Tuesday to inaugurate a pump station that takes East End and Long Look one step closer to getting a 5,000-population sewage system that has been delayed for more than two decades.

At the facility, which is located next to the village’s police station, Cabinet members and other leaders stood in the shade of awnings to commemorate the milestone with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Just last week during testing, water was successfully pumped from this very station all the way to Paraquita Bay,” said Communications and Works Minister Kye Rymer. “The pathway is clear. The system is ready. It works. It only now needs to be fed with sewage.”

After a few more weeks of testing, he added, the government will fully commission the Paraquita Bay treatment plant and begin processing sewage from East End.

Four pillars

The construction of the full sewage system includes four pillars, Mr. Rymer said.

The first is the Paraquita Bay sewage plant that was completed around 2015 by the United Kingdom-based company Biwater, which also built another sewage plant at Burt Point and the desalination plant at Paraquita Bay.

The Paraquita Bay sewage plant, however, was not commissioned because the government never connected it to East End as planned, and it sustained damage in Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Now it is ready to go, according to Mr Rymer.

“We’ve invested in repairing that facility,” he said Tuesday. “We replaced all the damaged components and upgraded the entire system. All repairs have been completed, individually tested, and are in good working condition. And it is soon to be officially commissioned.”

He did not disclose a projected date for the commissioning.

Second pillar

The project’s second pillar is the new Long Swamp pump station, which serves as the collection hub for all sewage from Long Look and East End, Mr. Rymer said.

He added that building the facility was not a small undertaking, describing features including wet wells, inspection chambers, and mechanical pumps designed to send sewage directly to the treatment plant in Paraquita Bay.

The project’s third pillar, he said, is the installation of a network of gravity lines and pumping mains to transport the sewage to the plant. The minister said most of these lines have already been laid over the past 20 years, but the lines connecting Long Swamp and Parham Town with the rest of the East End are still outstanding.

“Proudly, I can say the works will commence soon to complete that segment,” he said of the remaining work, which he described as the project’s fourth and final pillar. “And we are committed to seeing this through to the end.”

Other priorities

Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley said various setbacks and previous administrations’ decisions to prioritise other projects kept the pump station languishing for decades.

“Yesterday, I was also very happy and pleased to be a part of the 10th anniversary of the Cyril B. Romney Tortola Pier Park,” he said. “And it is a beautiful facility. It is a beautiful facility. But funds were diverted from this project to that project. And while the [park] is a wonderful project, it should have never been done at the expense of the people of the Seventh and the Eighth District.”

In 2015, $8 million from a CIBC loan earmarked for the sewage system was transferred to the pier park project, which was completed the following year. Similarly, a $15 million Banco Popular loan earmarked for the sewage project in 2009 ultimately went to the construction of the Dr. D. Orlando Smith Hospital.

Pump station

The speakers at the Tuesday ceremony also included Patrick Mitchell, managing director of BioSafe Treatment and Septic Solutions, which received the con – tract for the Long Swamp pump station project in 2023.

Mr. Mitchell said the facility was completed between last September and December and cost roughly $1 million.

“What is happening here is real. Everything here is functional. It’s working. We tested it, we know it’s working,” Mr. Mitchell said, citing the 230-horsepower pumps, the grid and collection chambers, and the network of pipes leading to Paraquita Bay. “This is not a dream anymore. This is a reality.”

Mr. Mitchell noted that BioSafe will also be involved in the ongoing efforts to expand the reach of the sewage system throughout East End.

In December, the company received a contract valued at $4,152,452.50 to install a sewerage gravity main line from Parham Town to Long Swamp. At the time, completion was promised within eight months.

Feeling ‘great’

Cabinet members and East End residents expressed their excitement at the station’s long-awaited arrival, and they said they look forward to cleaner and better-smelling streets.

“I really, really feel great,” said Long Look resident Cheryl George, who attended the ceremony. “I think it’s a huge accomplishment for our district, and I am grateful, because [since] I was born they’ve been talking about this, and I am happy to see that it’s a reality.”

Financial Services and Economic Development Junior Minister Lorna Smith stressed the benefits of cleanliness.

“This project is evidence of the cleanliness that this country continues to adopt,” she said during her speech. “This East End, Long Swamp area — Long Look and so on — is the gateway, if we want to call it that, to this territory. And what better place to really install this sewage programme or project than right here?”