Some residents of Yellow Elder Gardens expressed concerns on Monday about a recent announcement that their water supply may be contaminated, but environmental health officials contend that the contamination may only exist in private wells.
The issue is an unsettling one for those residents who no longer rely on city water.
One resident, Joann Clarke of West Dennis Court, said that she was forced to get a private well following a decrease in water pressure and quality.
She indicated that her family relies heavily on its private well.
“I have great concerns because I have a lot of grand kids and I use this contaminated water to bathe them in,” Mrs. Clarke told The Bahama Journal on Monday.
“We never made the mistake of drinking it. We always bought drinking water. But we do bathe and cook with our well water.”
Mrs. Clarke said that she was not aware of the contamination, but was curious about what the government is doing to contain the situation.
She feared that there could be severe health consequences for persons who drink the contaminated water and asserted that something like this should never be allowed to happen again.
“The government needs to test these gas stations regularly and contaminations like this one they should know about,” she said. “Testing now is useless because the damage could have already been done.”
Lillian Greene, another resident of Yellow Elder, supports further probing into this matter.
“If contamination is a possibility then the government really needs to check further into this matter,” Mrs. Greene said. “We have to live in this area and we have to use water. Many of us have private wells and people who do not have them wish that they did. City water in this area is terrible.”
Minister of Works and Utilities Bradley Roberts recently explained that the contaminated water was one of the reasons for the delay in completing the Harrold Road project.
The Yellow Elder community is situated near that major New Providence thoroughfare.
“The studies that were carried out indicated that there is some contamination,” Minister Roberts said. “Now how extensive it is, we don’t know but as they continue the excavation there is a lot of work because they have to remove the contaminated fill from that area.
“We do not want there to be a boom in the area. When they start to dig in the area they have to be very careful.”
Minister Roberts also indicated that leaky gasoline holding tanks at a service station on the corner of Blue Hill and Robinson Road may be responsible for contaminating the water table in that area.
He said that the leak prompted officials to take action and have the station shut down until the leak was contained.
The Minister also indicated that in the past other service stations in that area have also experienced seepage from their tanks, and have all replaced them in an effort to prevent future contamination.
But Yellow Elder residents like Chinyere Wilkinson questioned the environmental procedures in place to guard against service stations contaminating the surrounding environment.
“In my opinion the government should already have in place mandatory systems where tanks should be checked or changed every five years,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “The evaluation of the condition of the tank is something that should have been in place years ago.
“My biggest concern is about getting sick because this problem could have been festering for a while especially in some of the older service stations that have not been renovated for quite a while.”
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Environment Ron Pinder said that his department has been discouraging persons from using private wells for years. He said that a number of contaminants including gasoline were found in private wells.
“The Department of Environmental Health Services, which conducts consistent and random testing of well water in residential areas, has long been admonishing the Bahamian public to use the city water because the well water is not consistent with respect to the salt content and bacteria level found in the water,” Mr. Pinder said.
“There is always possible contamination of well water supply because well water is constantly moving. It is a dynamic situation.
“There may be any number of conditions that effect your well water supply including a malfunctioning cesspit system, human beings contaminating it with indiscriminate dumping of spent oil and other chemicals in and around your well water supply, and even flooding.”
Mr. Pinder said that his department has recognized that there exists a problem in Yellow Elder Garden and has formed a working committee to address the issue.
By: Perez Clarke, The Bahama Journal
