Air Fin plant on stream by
year end, says Barendsen
~ Enerserve protest two years late ~
CUPECOY--Air Fin, located on the premises of Cupecoy Beach and Yacht Resort, has been working hard to finish in a record time of five months its new state-of-the-art reverse osmosis water production plant with the latest remote control computerised electronic panels to operate the facility, even from outside St. Maarten.
“Normally it would take 10 to 11 months to build such a plant, but we are doing it in five months,” Air Fin director Willem Barendsen told The Daily Herald in an interview Friday. He has extra manpower working extra hours to get the plant up and running in two more weeks.
As St. Maarten has been experiencing water woes, while a new tourism high season will be starting next week, increased water production capacity will be of vital importance to the island.
Air Fin will offer additional production of 3,700 cubic metres of water per day. Barendsen said the entire installed capacity could be produced as soon as the plant was operational. He commended GEBE for doing a tremendous infrastructural job in a short time, installing pipes to pump the water from the plant to the water tanks in Mullet Bay.
The high pressure pump and the membranes will be installed shortly. Local company SWS has been working on the installation of the plant, helping Air Fin specialists in reverse osmosis water production.
“The crew has done a tremendous job and may change to 16-hour shifts to finish the work. We are on schedule,” Barendsen said.
Although there was a three-week delay in delivering some pipes, this will not have an impact on the plant going into production. “They came in last Monday instead of three weeks ago. We are confident, however, that we will produce water by the end of the year.”
Air Fin will be pumping water from three different wells just outside the plant. Tests have shown that the water is of very good quality. The level of salt in the water is the same as sea water, but the water is much cleaner.
The contract Air Fin signed with government was for production of 2,750 cubic metres per day, but Barendsen said he had installed a production capacity of 3,700 cubic metres. “We installed much more than we should, but we believe the water is needed and seeing the demand for water, we are convinced government will ask us to produce more.”
He said the plant would be able to produce the full 3,700 cubic metres installed capacity a day as soon as production started. Air Fin has committed to start production not later than December 31.
A few days of testing will be required before production starts, especially to check the electronic panels. This will be done by technicians from the United States of America.
Air Fin is set as well to take over the water plant at Cay Bay currently being operated by Enerserve. Government has terminated the contract with Enerserve per March 15, 2008.
Air Fin’s intention is to upgrade the plant and increase its production capacity. “Based on what has been installed, we can bring it up to 13,500 cubic metres per day.” This would make the total installed water production capacity in St. Maarten more than 17,000 cubic metres, “which should be enough to cover the demand for water in the coming years,” Barendsen said.
He reacted as well to comments by Enerserve director William Harless indicating that the company would be taking government to court on the bidding procedure for a new water production contract.
“It’s funny that the protest comes after two years,” Barendsen said. According to him, it’s not correct that after the contract was advertised in July, bids were submitted to retain the contract.
Barendsen pointed out that the bidding process had started in September 2005, when government asked three companies to submit bids for a new water production contract, and that Enerserve had delayed that process by asking for more time to submit a bid, causing the bidding process not to start until November 2005.
The second time the process was delayed, according to Barendsen, was when Enerserve and the other bidding party asked to submit new prices after the bids already had been submitted.
Barendsen: “My feeling is if Enerserve had a problem at that time with Air Fin, it should have submitted a bid under protest that others were not qualified. That was not done. As I see in the newspaper now, Harless is planning a legal challenge of the bid procedure. In my opinion, it is two years too late.”
Finally, he said that, in his opinion, Enerserve had had everything in its hands, but had not made use of the opportunity and had tried to do so after the bidding.
