My main and immediate concern is the "South Coast Sewerage System" which I always thought was poorly conceived.

In this day and age where worldwide, except for a few blessed regions, water is at a premium, to discard millions of gallons of potentially useful water to sea is, apart from being aesthetically repulsive is, at best, only slightly short of criminal.

There are three other, and all better, alternatives for disposing of the effluent resulting from the treatment process. In order of overall benefit and efficiency, these are as follows:

1. Recycle for irrigation: and with the Graeme Hall agricultural station so handily located, this, to me, should have been the obvious choice;
2. Aquifer recharge, by returning the effluent to an elevation above the 100 ft contour and discharging into shallow wells, and for this, the Christ Church dome would have been perfect, discharging preferably to the North side of the dome and thereby providing a 3 MGD+, recharge to the St. George Valley catchment;
3. Hydraulic damming; by discharge into shallow wells along the coastline, but not close enough to the coast as to cause and coastal pollution.

In all cases the effluent would require at least good secondary treatment and chlorination.

To my knowledge also, there were questions regarding the level of supervision given to the construction of the system, and unresolved issues resulting from the methodology utilised for construction, which was largely out-of-sight, and, seemingly therefore "out-of-mind!"

I was not involved with the project, but was certainly aware of many of the issues encountered.

It had been my honour to engineer the Spring Garden desalination plant from "Feasibility Study" through to "final commissioning;" - a project which had been acclaimed to have been the most successful project ever executed under the aegis of the Barbados Government. I had very seriously considered offering to return to Barbados to "clean up the mess that is the South Coast Sewerage System;" but hesitate to do so because of the urgency of the requirement and my present work load.

With best wishes for outstanding success to "Mia & Crew."