The V.I. Water and Power Authority Governing Board approved more changes to two water system rehabilitation projects on the west side of St. Croix during a meeting Thursday.
Board members approved a seven-month no-cost extension to the Hannah’s Rest water rehabilitation project, which began in March and was initially slated for completion by September 2024. According to a press release WAPA issued after Thursday’s meeting, the project’s delays were caused by disruptions in the global supply chain.
The board also approved a $1,617,536 expansion to the Campo Rico waterline rehabilitation project, expanding the scope of the project by extending the water distribution network and adding infrastructure like hydrants and service connections. The project’s completion date was set for February 2026.
The third item board members approved was a 10-month extension and $1,531,599 cost increase for completion of the utility’s inventory assessment.
Residents on St. Croix have long complained of discolored, foul-smelling water from the territory’s water system. Concerns about water quality and safety became more urgent in October 2023 when testing of the island’s water meters revealed staggeringly high levels of lead and copper at some locations, and Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. declared a state of emergency in response. Follow-up tests showed substantially lower levels of lead and copper, and the initial results were later attributed to faulty testing protocols.
WAPA Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Karl Knight reiterated during a report to the board Thursday that the authority does not have a lead issue, and the utility has never used lead service lines or “anything that would contribute to an acute lead crisis, as we’ve seen in other parts of the country.”
“We do have an issue with brown water which is … caused by corrosion and ductile iron piping,” he said. “That ductile iron piping on St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix has, in many instances, exceeded its useful life and the corrosion — when pipes get rusty, water that passes through those pipes becomes discolored.”
Those pipes are being replaced with PVC piping through the utility’s water rehabilitation projects, which Knight said should mitigate the issue.
Knight said the things that keep him up at night are “areas of potential, catastrophic failure,” including the Richmond Power Plant’s aging T3 transformer. The authority’s governing board unanimously approved a $1.52 million allotment for a new transformer during a meeting in December. Knight said Thursday that the authority is in the middle of procuring the new transformer and that, in the meantime, the utility’s new chief operating officer, Lemuel Lavinier, has a “workaround.”
WAPA officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Friday to celebrate commissioning the four long-awaited — and long-delayed — Wärtsilä generators at Richmond. On Thursday, Knight said the WAPA personnel have “worked out most of the kinks, but they’re certainly already paying dividends.”
“We’re seeing the benefit financially of their performance, but also reliability-wise,” he said, noting that some people “wrinkled their brows” when he mentioned having shorter outages during last week’s ceremony. Knight said that with the new units, outages in the St. Thomas and St. John district are less frequent and, for the most part, shorter.
“And one of the reasons is because we now have standby generation. Some of our legacy units like Unit 23, Unit 27 — even, at times, Unit 15 — are actually being operated in standby mode,” he said. “Meaning, if something does go down, we are able to — as quick as we can start those engines — we’re able to pick back up those portions of the grid, which is a luxury that we haven’t really had in recent times.”
The board also discussed documentation of potential conflicts of interest among WAPA board members, executives and managers ahead of upcoming audits. Chief Financial Officer Lorraine Kelly said the process involves having each employee and board member document whether they have a conflict of interest regarding any transactions, contracts, procurements or purchase orders.
“And the intention is primarily one of antifraud, but also it’s just a good practice that we understand sometimes a spouse [or] a family member may own a business in which we have procurement efforts,” she said. “And it might just be helpful for us to know to make sure to recuse that person if there were any kind of discussions or negotiations regarding the topic.”
