Contrary to recent recommendations made to the CNMI government and the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality believes that Saipan has enough water at its current source and a reverse osmosis water treatment plant is not the solution to the lack of 24-hour water service on the island.<\/p>\n
In an interview, BECQ administrator Frank Rabauliman told Saipan Tribune that he doesn\u2019t believe that building an RO system is the right solution to Saipan\u2019s water problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe that the reverse osmosis is the right fix, right solution. Simply because, the issue about not enough water in the pipes, that\u2019s very true, but there\u2019s not enough water in the pipes because there are massive leaks all over the place,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n
BECQ, with its divisions Coastal Resources Management and Environmental Quality, oversees CUC, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission.<\/p>\n
Rabauliman stressed that Saipan has the source, and the current source, which is the aquifer underground, is enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no data to tell us otherwise,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe source is not the problem, we have enough water supply. It\u2019s really pumping in the water from the source, into the pipe, and losing 70 percent of that before it even gets into the\u2026it wouldn\u2019t matter if you put in five RO systems putting it on the same pipe if you will still lose 70 percent of it. It doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
An RO system uses pressure and a semi-permeable\u00a0membrane to filter or desalinate, demineralize or deionize water from a source, usually seawater, converting it to drinking water.<\/p>\n
Fix the leaks<\/strong><\/p>\n For Rabauliman, fixing the existing pipes first would be a more worthwhile endeavor.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you were to pump in more water through RO, you will just lose all that volume of water in those leaks so the right approach I believe is to address the leaks. And I believe the water task force during its time did a very robust approach on trying to identify these leaks. So, leaks and changing out of those meters, put in the meters that work,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they fix that, I am a firm believer that we will address that issue of shortage of water,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Asked what if new pipes will be built along with the RO, Rabauliman said it is still better to focus on the pipes first. <\/p>\n \u201cRO is not a cheap undertaking, so as changing all the pipes. I would think that you would want to change first the pipes if you have the funding for that, the capital,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n He added that CUC needs to fill the top positions in the corporation that has been vacant for some time now.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of those from my perspective are what\u2019s happening in the front lines. It\u2019s what CUC is supposed to be doing. What CUC needs is the support, CUC needs the executive director that has been vacant for the longest time. CUC needs to fill those positions so that those administrators, managers, can direct the folks in the front line in pursuing those illegal tapping, pursuing those leaks that siphoning out all the water out,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n The BECQ administrator said he is not sure if studies have been made regarding implementing an RO system on Saipan.<\/p>\n Rabauliman made BECQ\u2019s opinions known to the administration especially after gathering that only some 30 percent of CUC\u2019s produced water is \u201cbillable\u201d or goes through the pipes to the customers while the \u201c70 percent is going somewhere else.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI had to bring that up to the administration,\u201d Rabauliman said. <\/p>\n \u201cIn fact I shared my thoughts with the administration that from BECQ\u2019s perspective, we don\u2019t believe that an RO is necessary but rather, we need to focus more on leak detection, and identifying those illegal tapping,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Talks of building an RO system has been in the buzz since CUC asked the administration to declare a water emergency on Saipan.<\/p>\n Earlier last month, in a meeting initiated by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, businessman Robert Toelkes proposed establishing a public-to-public partnership agreement to build a $160-million RO water treatment plant.<\/p>\n In his presentation, Toelkes said that a six million gallon per day RO plant was the immediate solution to the water problem in Saipan.<\/p>\n The administration has earlier expressed their desire to build such a system on Saipan while CUC also views the project as the solution to the water woes of their old system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contrary to recent recommendations made to the CNMI government and the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[880,49,11064,11522],"class_list":["post-229656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-becq","tag-cuc","tag-environmental-quality","tag-robert-toelkes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}