Suriname to ship fresh water to Barbados

Scheduled to depart the South American nation around November 25, the shipment of a maximum of two million litres of surface water in a flextank was made possible by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of Barbados and Amazone Resources (AR); a Dutch- Suriname company, in April 2015.

The announcement, some 18 months later, that a trial shipment would be sent to Barbados, was made by AR’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Auke Piek, on Tuesday (October 25) during a press conference on the sidelines of the 2016 edition of the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) Conference and Exhibition, October 24 - 28, at Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain.

“We would like to have the launch of the flexbag on November 21 or 22 and after that, it will be sent to Barbados with (drinkable) surface water from the rivers. The journey should take four to five days, using a tugboat to pull the floating flexbag/flextank...We will test, through our trial, how does the water behave during transportation.”

Piek said the MOU allowed AR “to organise the first test trial with fresh Suriname water and from there, we will grow our business model.”

“We (humans) need water to survive, we need water to grow our vegetables, to (run) our industries. Because the population is growing, we need to have this commodity. AR had an independent consultant company test the water in many, many places in Suriname, including the Suriname River and the Coppename River, and according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), water that’s at a depth of two metres is drinkable already.”

Piek explained that because fresh water floats on salt water, the flexbag or flextank (he used both terms) will be about “ten to 12 centimetres” above the surface of the water.

Each bag can hold 40 million litres or 10.5 million gallons, is 600 metres in length and, as Piek put it, “is like an iceberg” which means in the event of a hurricane, the flexbag, “like an iceberg, will move with a hurricane. It will not really be disturbed.”

The bags will also be equipped with GPS signals for tracking purposes as well as for constant monitoring of the water quality en route to Barbados.

“This is something I hope you would see, in a few years, plenty of (flextanks) cruising around the Caribbean waters providing fresh water to us all,” Piek said with a smile, as he shared his passion for the long-term sustainable supply of potable water.

Although Barbados has agreed to accept this first shipment, Piek could not say how the water would be used since “this is a test run.” He did note that following a sustained period of drought on the island, “there is an urgent need of fresh water, both for agricultural and industry but also for human beings.”

Once the water arrives in Barbados, it can either be left in the flextank; which would serve as an offshore storage device, the water can be transferred to the utility company’s storage tanks or even sent to end-users.

“At this moment, all options are open. We can leave the flextank offshore of Barbados... as a storage tank because it’s our plan not only to have one bag but maybe 400 or 600 bags in the future. So we can use the bags as a storage facility...it just needs enough space to be connected to the floating bouy systems,” Piek stated.

Suriname’s Minister of Natural Resources, Regilio J Dodson, was also in attendance at Tuesday’s presentation. He explained that his government’s role is to facilitate “government to government” arrangements, following which AR can enter into supply arrangements with State and/or private entities.

“What we want to do, as a government, is set up the government to government structure to get this going, to get the idea across (about) the potential water supply,” Dodson stated