Out of $2.6 million contracted for the rehabilitation of the Burt Point wastewater treatment plant, $1.7 million has been spent to date, Transportation and Works Minister Kye Rymer said during a House of Assembly meeting last Thursday.
The entire project — including the construction of a new main control centre that will house control panels and “associated equipment” — is expected to be completed next month, according to the minister.
“The majority of the material has been procured and received at the wastewater treatment plant site at Burt Point,” he explained. “Biwater is currently setting up to send forward an electrical engineer to complete all electrical work to advance the project towards completion.”
As part of the project, he said, the ministry has incorporated a receiving station to allow pump trucks to dump sewage at the Burt Point plant, eliminating the need to dump at the main pump station in Road Town.
“As we seek to improve our city of Road Town, we have to put measures in place to enhance our aesthetics and the way that we operate, including our pump station,” he said. “By having these types of operations relocated to the soon-to-be-commissioned plant at Burt Point, we will allow for the monitoring and logging of pump trucks while avoiding the sight of sewage being dumped in plain sight of tourists and residents alike.”
Longstanding delays
The plant started processing sewage in late 2015 but has been out of commission since sustaining damage during Hurricane Irma in 2017. As a result, the territory continues to flush raw sewage directly into the ocean.
The repair contract stems from Cabinet’s August 2020 decision that Biwater, which built the plant and a similar one in Paraquita Bay, should be hired to recommission the facility.
That same month, Mr. Rymer said government had drafted a contract worth about $1.4 million for Biwater to carry out the first phase of repairs and bring the plant back online.
At the time, Mr. Rymer also said that once the initial paperwork was finished, he expected the plant to be recommissioned in six months.
Delays followed, but last August the government finally entered into a $2,594,317 contract with Biwater International Limited to carry out the work on the plant, and a mobilisation payment was handed over in September, Mr. Rymer said last October.
At the time, he added that materials would be shipped by January and the repair project would be completed by May.
During his statement last Thursday, he didn’t provide an explanation for the delays.