Nevis Island Water Exploration On Schedule

Charlestown, Nevis
September 26, 2007

Drilling for water on Nevis will commence early next month, as scheduled, when the drill rig arrives on the island later this week.  That’s according to Junior Minister with responsibility for Public Utilities and the Environment, the Hon. Carlisle Powell. He made the disclosure recently while he gave the Department of Information a detailed update on the water exploration project which commenced in March.

Minister Powell said during a meeting with head of the advance team, Geologist Dr. Ronald Skiphoag of Bedrock Exploration And Development technologies (BEAD), he was informed that all the technical work had been completed and the project was now ready to move to the next phase.

“When they [the drill rigs] arrive in Nevis towards the end of September it is anticipated that they will start drilling in very early October. They have identified the sites and they will start drilling in the Hamilton area. It is proposed that they will move to a site in Cane Garden then the third proposal is a site in Beaumont.“All of the technical work has been done and Dr. Skiphoag has assured us [NIA] that by November 2007, once the drilling goes well, they hope to have for us a half a million gallons per day to put into our system.  The other good news is that the sites that they have identified, in particularly the Hamilton site, is pretty close to our mains and pretty close to the Hamilton reservoirs that we have and so, we wouldn’t have to do a tremendous amount of road construction, pipe laying and building of new reservoirs because they would be able to go directly into the system that we have,” he said.

With respect to the project timeline, Mr. Powell said that the completion date had been put at February of 2008 by Dr. Skiphoag and his BEAD team. He said the Nevis Island Administration would ensure that all of the water provided met the international standards for potable water, so that the demand for the product would not become a major concern to consumers.

“So work is still very much on schedule…I think the next step is the one that will excite most of us. [It] will be the arrival of the drill rig in Nevis and commencement of the drilling. These people have proven in Tobago [and] Trinidad that they have been able to find water,” he said

The Minister noted that the Company had a proven record of successful water explorations but he was aware there were a number of pessimists who doubted their authenticity.

“In Tobago I was able to visit one of their wells which is producing at 800 gallons a minute.  And even if we were to find something in Nevis that could produce at half of that amount, we would be terribly excited, he said.

Bedrock Exploration And Development Technologies successfully completed exploration for ground water in Trinidad and Tobago and Montserrat.