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By Aabigayle McIntosh

The Japanese-funded Reverse Osmosis Plant at Ffryes Beach is expected to produce an additional 2.2 million gallons of water per day by the end of 2024.

Public Utilities Minister Melford Nicholas made that declaration during a state media interview following a tour of the facility with the Japanese ambassador.

“When we add the additional plant from the Japanese, that will make it five, and that will take our capacity to over 1.2 million gallons in this particular area.

But, when we build the additional plant from Seven Seas, that will add an additional 1 million gallons as well. So combined, we will have approximately 2.2 million gallons of water to satisfy the domestic and commercial requirements in this area and beyond,” the minister said.

The Japanese ambassador, Matsubara Yutaka, also pledged another plant to produce 360,000 gallons of water daily, making this the second facility so far.

“I heard this country has a great problem about water supply. One of the reasons is climate change and global warming and sea level rising and also, I know, your country is a disaster-prone country like Japan. You have hurricane, we have typhoon, the same situation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Minister Nicholas also noted that the plant from the Seven Seas Water Group should begin construction shortly.

“We expect it to commence construction, I would say, in another week or two and once that is complete, because it’s a quick build that we had asked for, we’d expect the plant to commence shipping of its component parts.

The timeline is looking like around September that we will be operational with the Seven Seas plant,” he said.

This will facilitate the goal of ensuring a reliable 24-7 water supply for all.

“We are still at about 7.5 million gallons per day. We have noticed that the shortages and the complaints reduced considerably at that volume, but we are expected to go throttle up in very short order.”