A wastewater treatment plant is to be constructed in the city, to provide the necessary capacity to address residential and commercial growth.
The Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) will advance the design and construction of the facility within the next five years, Planning and Implementation Director, Ramchand Jailall explained in an interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA). Jailall said that the water company has already commenced increasing its technical capacity to deliver on this objective.
“Last month we had a professor from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) here in Guyana, who delivered wastewater training to more than 20 engineers. The engineers were not only from GWI, but from agencies such as the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA,) the Georgetown Mayor and City Council, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ministry of Communities,” Jailall explained. The engineers were trained in the design and assessment of wastewater treatment plants, he said.
The design of the new plant would address the increased demands being placed on the existing Georgetown sewerage system. Jailall explained that the current system is unable to process the increased amount of effluent and wastewater from the city.
The Georgetown sewerage takes wastewater from to the Atlantic Ocean through an outfall in the Demerara River. Jailall explained that when the city’s system was designed, there was very high dilution and easy dissipation of the wastewater into the river. The increase in restaurants, hotels and the transient population going in and around Georgetown has created greater demand on the system, Jailall further explained.
GWI is also examining the construction of wastewater treatment systems for the new government housing schemes.
“We are looking at designing small systems, which they can connect to instead of them having the septic tanks, and having the water go into the drains, and breeding mosquitoes,” Jailall explained.
Wastewater is the water that goes down sinks, toilets and drains. Wastewater treatment plants treat wastewater before it is discharged into rivers or oceans. The process safeguards the water quality of the channels into which the water is discharged.
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