THE Japanese Government funded multi-million dollar water project for Honiara is yet to be handed over to Solomon Water, but vandals were already at work.
Last week, some people caused significant damages to one of the bore-holes at Borderline, east Honiara.
The Borderline bore-hole was one of 16 built under the project to meet Honiara’s increasing water supply demand.
To prevent vandals damaging the facilities, engineers designed well secured fences around the boreholes.
But at this Borderline one, vandals threw copra sacks onto the barb-wired fence with an attempt to scale it and enter the secured area.
When they could not make it onto the fence, they used a long and sharp instrument, which they pushed through a thin opening via the gate, damaging the facilities inside.
Solomon Water general manager Richard Austin described the action as “mindless”.
“We believe whoever did this was trying to get ‘free’ water from our installation,” Mr Austin said.
“This behaviour shows a complete disregard for the efforts of many people to provide good water services to the population of Honiara and an all-to-typical disrespect for anything good in the city that aims to improve the standards of living here,” he added.
Mr Austin said they spent $7 million to build these high security fences around the bore-holes to keep away vandals.
“The money that we spent on providing the standards of security fencing at these sites is still insufficient to prevent such ignorant and acts of vandalism which should be denounced by all.”
Meanwhile, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which has managed the project, will hand it over to Solomon Water next week on September 3.
The project should have been delivered to Solomon Water earlier this year.
But this was not possible after two of the four bore-fields failed to produce the results expected when they were tested.
Under the project, JICA built 16 boreholes in four bore-fields and four treated water storage reservoirs at Tasahe, Titinge, Skyline, and Borderline.
When JICA test-operate the bore-fields before handing them over, Titinge and Skyline failed to produce the results expected.
The two bore-fields failed to extract enough water for the systems to run.
Because of the outcome, JICA engineers stopped operating both systems to avoid potentially drying the boreholes permanently, or sucking sea water at the end.
Engineers took time to study and reassess the situation, and now Mr Austin said the problem has been fixed.
“The project will be handed over to Solomon Water on September 3,” Mr Austin said.
The water supply project was aimed at improving Honiara’s poor water supply situation and lessen the city’s reliance on Kongulai water source, which is located on customary land and has been disrupted every now and then by certain landowners.
These new sources have the combined capacity of producing water at 12.8ML/day. Currently Solomon Water’s normal daily production is 27 ML/day in Honiara, about half of which comes from Kongulai source.
By OFANI EREMAE
