St. Maarten Private Eye

I’m informed of what’s happening too, here’s my 2 cents. GEBE has it's share of water leakage, but it is not the leakage that have the company NV GEBE in a water shortage situation. To highlight how serious it is, we on the French side right now are assisting in supplying drinking water to the Dutch side along with Aqua-marina and Enerserve, whom government has a contract with to supply Sint Maarten with water, it’s all hands on deck coming to their rescue.

Sources told me that NV GEBE is and has always tried reducing their water leakage percentage, they bring in a company from all the way out of Texas to help achieve this, this company specializes in water leak detection, in fact the website of this company proclaim their findings of Sint Maarten via a map.

The exact problem of water shortage has to do with these large developments, mainly in the construction area where large condos and hotels are being built at an alarming rate. This is done with out the proper and needed study of exisiting demands and projected future demands pertaining to drinking water. The island is moving so fast that no one have time to carry out these type of studies, at least where our drinking water is concern.
No one is seeing the need for a building stop either so as to assess the strains all this large scale development have on the exisiting infrastructure and utility company production, distribution and carrying capacity, it goes for Telcell, UTS and Telem.

Everyone is wrapped up in this “not all that glitters is gold” economy on the Dutch side (not that we don’t have our share of problems too), this not to say that they are not attractive and doing some good and positive developments, but they sure are not in balance and it will have its effects, I assure you it is a statistical certainty.

On the French side we are ok, couple months ago we were at our wits ends trying to get out of a serious water shortage, notice the Dutch side never intervene to assist, but today we are assisting them. It was said we never asked for assistance, well good thing we didn’t because the public would have known that there is a serious shortage in water production for the Dutch side of Sint Maarten.
We knew of their situation and didn’t even bother asking because we have been supplying them with water for awhile now. First it used to be when their water plant had problems now the water plant is fully functional and we still have to supply them with drinking water.

OK, to explain the exemption of the new water quality standards hypothetically speaking, realistically how are you going to tell the French side to apply those standards if they in some way or the other differentiate from the French water quality standards, besides the French you will have to force the other company assisting you to also apply/adopt the standards when supplying the water to NV GEBE.
Case in point is Aqua design, they will have to comply eventually, but note that they don’t need to on such a large scale, because they do not have a contract with NV GEBE their ROI on such an investment will not be secured.

There are frequent water interruptions on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten, now I believe what the writer was saying.

I also found out that the French side is assisting us with water again for the past few days; it is possible that we are still receiving water from them I was told.

Have any one experiencing this problem? And to make certain it is not my problem.... well when the entire neighborhood is experiencing the same.

"and all other companies must comply with it, especially in the area of bacteria such salmonellas which causes Typhoid fever."

Now I would agree that a lack of water is a not so nice experience. Buttttt, lack of water does not mean that the water that comes out of the pipe is no good to drink. Besides if you use water, for instance, to make baby milk, it would be good to boil it first. At least that is what I always did.

Stating however that salmonella, a bacteria that multiplies in undercooked chicken rather rapidly, can cause stomach problems and a fever, but normally you would not immediately die of it.

Stating however that it causes typhoid is to say the least riduculous.......

Sure we have a right to demand that the water that is provided to us is of good quality, after all, the price is that way, but don't overdo .........

Shortage is one thing, getting sick is another..

I don't know if anyone knows it or not, but Tamarind Hill has only cistern water and no piped in water. The neighborhood was hoping to have water soon but the demands from the Westin have affected the area and they may not be able, after all these years of waiting for water to be able to hook up...so sad.

The residents of Dawn Beach Estates, as well as Tamarind Hill has serious problems with the water supply from GEBE. On most days there's simply no water. Residents were told that the Westin Resort has preference. Lucky all the homes in these areas have cistern;however in the past couple weeks SXM has been experincing what I would consider a drought, no significant rainfall in weeks. Imagine owning a home or purhcasing a Condo and not be able to tap into any water for most of the day. We have to start asking more question on the new water contracts, which I believe hit a snag this week and will not be signed before the Island Council election this year. This is the same with the new garbage contracts