Day+10+Desalination+Plant+and+Bats+at+Magens+Bay

by Jared Sandberg and Rachel Perl

We got to take a trip to the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA) in the morning. The purpose of this trip was to tour the desalination plant in order to see how the islands convert the salt water they have all around them, into fresh water to distribute to the cities. Most homes and every new building on the island use a cistern system though, by collecting rainwater from their roofs. Every roof has grooves in it that guide the rainwater into a huge cistern basin underneath the building or house that they use for water since fresh water is so expensive and scarce on the islands. This is because there are no major sources of fresh water on the island to collect fresh water from.

The start of our tour started with getting hard hats and badges to wear through the plant. We were supposed to get a tour by two environmental engineers, but instead was led through the plant by a man that didn’t seem to know much about the processes and couldn’t answer all our questions. Although that was the case, he still was able to show us around the plant and show us what all the different parts of the plant were for. We were surprised to not only get information about the desalination part of the plant, but also about the energy part of the plant, as this was also their power plant. It was very interesting to see all the different processes that go into generating power and making fresh water. Some of us looked bewildered throughout the tour, but some of the future engineers seemed to try and understand and learn from the tour guide.

Towards the end of the tour, we were able to see the control room and the chemistry lab where they test the water going in and out of the plant for different properties and contaminants. They must follow guidelines put out by the Environmental Protection Agency that put limits on certain chemicals and contaminants that can be in the final product that is distributed throughout the island. This was very interesting, and the chemists were really able to answer all our questions about this process.