Two Major Water Facilities for Orange Walk

Residents of Orange Walk Town are getting a major boost to their water supply system, as Belize Water Services, along with government officials, rolled out new infrastructure aimed at improving reliability and climate resilience. The upgrades come amid growing concerns over aging wells and the impact of climate change on water quality and supply. News Five’s Shane Williams reports.

 

Shane Williams, Reporting

For years, Orange Walk’s water system has depended heavily on a small network of wells, some now under strain from climate change and rising salinity levels. Executive Chairman of the Belize Water Services Limited Cornelio Acosta says before today, Orange Walk had barely enough water to satisfy demand and no backup system when the main line is compromised.

 

Cornelio Acosta, Executive Chairman, BWS

“We’ve seen where climate change has severely affected two of our main wells in Orange Rock. We have four wells here. One of them has completely collapsed. The other one we’re looking at increased salinity, which is a bit strange being inland, right? So at that point we said, you know what there’s a need for a backup. These wells provide about ninety percent of the water that the consumers use here in Orange Walk. We had a discussion with Prime Minister. We said, we informed him of the urgency. We managed to get the property that we have now in Petville. I think it’s about ten acres to put additional wells. So we started off with two wells. We’ve commissioned the first one. That alone can provide about fifty percent of the water that the consumers demand for Orange Walk.”

 

At the same time, government is investing in expanded storage and pumping capacity, key to ensuring consistent service, even during outages.

 

Michel Chebat, Minister of Public Utilities

“As you said, we had two inaugurations. We did first the Petville pumping station, which has a capacity of 300,000 gallons per day. And that is an important pumping station because for many years they have been depending on the Clark Street pumps, and so that along with this storage facility will lend to reliability, to resilience especially in terms of climate change and in delivering of water services to the residents of Petville and of Orange Walk Town. It stores fifty thousand gallons of water, and this is extended. This is intended as a redundancy for the supply of water to Orange Walk Town. In the case of an outage, this supplies for up to three hours, giving the technicians a chance to go in and make the necessary repairs without the residents feeling an immediate loss of water services.”

 

For residents, those improvements can’t come soon enough. Frequent breaks and aging infrastructure have long disrupted daily life. And when the disruptions lead to frustration, the man who must answer the many phone calls is Mayor Ladrick Sheppherd.

 

Ladrick Sheppard, Mayor of Orange Walk

“When we have these breakage, sometimes you can feel the trial because when they have these breakage you have to call the mayor because at the end of the day, you have to break the street. Like I said, like Honourable Kevin Bernard just mentioned it’s true. We used to come around here. Then what? What’s the nice part with it? When every time the tank used to full, it runs over. So most of the kids used to come over and then and enjoying the nice water that spills around, but the watchman used to chase us away. But that’s the fun part I remember and now seeing that old tank remove and replace it with this new one man is huge. BWS has really been doing their job.”

 

With new wells, expanded storage, and upgraded pumping capacity, officials say Orange Walk’s water system is now better equipped to withstand both growing demand and the pressures of a changing climate. Shane Williams for News Five.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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