And keeping it on the plight and perils of the polluted New River, you'll remember that, earlier this week, BSI/ASR finally responded to the Orange Walk residents who say they are one of the main sources of the pollution.
They say they responsibly treat their wastewater, and when it is released from their facility is does not cause any harm to the environment. To prove that point, last weekend, they opened up their facilities to the conservation-minded organization, the Friends of the New River, to show how their wastewater treatment process works.
A BSI representative discussed that visit with our colleagues from CTV 3 News:
Zeidy Lienez, REHSM, BSI
"The New River approached because they wanted to know a little bit more about how is it that the waste water treatment system - there were 3 topics pf interest for them which was the air emissions, the waste water systems and the management of our waste in terms of solid waste what we do to recycle and also anything related to the management of chemicals, so those 3 topics was of their interest and we open the doors for them to come to on site and have a look at what we have in place to manage each of these 3 areas of interest, so really that was in the spirit of transparency and for them to look at what we have in place it was important for us to also give them a tour, not only to look at it from a theoretical standpoint, but also to come on site and have a feel of what we have in place from their own standpoint. We want people to see we don't discard untreated material into the river. That's not true, so that was actually something that we wanted to debunk so that people can actually see that we do have a treatment system, we do have a cooling system and all of our effluent discharge to the river has to pass through these series of treatments before its actually discharge into the river."
We understand that the company is currently concerned that the DOE as the regulator is making unreasonably high requirements for the start of the New Sugar Crop season. The Department has written the company to make certain upgrades to its wastewater system.
The Department wants them to install adequately sized spray coolers in each of their cooling ponds. This will reduce the temperature of the waters being discharged into the river.
The Department also wants them to install a new cooling tower among other requirements.
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