By ANNELIA NIXON

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Long-standing Eleuthera vacation rental customers are deserting the island over its utilities woes with power and water providers yesterday said to be competing to outdo each other over outages.

Amid talk of following in Harbour Island’s footsteps to protest over the situation, Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) yesterday issued a notice warning that North Eleuthera could expect an interruption in electricity supply beginning at noon and that it was due to last up to three hours.

A planned BPL outage for Tarpum Bay and Rock Sound was extended for an hour and, with those power outages, came interruptions in Water & Sewerage Corporation’s water supply due to the reliance of reverse osmosis supplies and systems on electricity. The latter acknowledged “the frustration and inconvenience” to Rock Sound and Tarpum Bay residents but blamed the loss of supply on BPL “irregularities”.

“Every week there’s a power outage,” owner of Forbes Pest Control, Kirkwood Forbes, told Tribune Business. “Every week there’s a water outage. It’s like they compete with each other. I can out do you this week. I’ll stay off for three days.”

Leslie Fraser, owner of a vacation rental property in Northern Eleuthera, said she had to cease renting to tourists because she received so many complaints regarding power and water outages. “I just couldn’t take the complaints, you know, it was just beyond what I could take,” she said.

Ms Fraser added that she has had to provide partial and half refunds to guests for the inconvenience, while many threatened to vacation elsewhere until the water and power companies fix the issues plaguing the island.

“Eleuthera is a very popular destination,” she added. “The high-end properties are still doing okay. They have the money for generators and water tanks but the low-end homes are hurting.  Airlines have cancelled routes to North Eleuthera because it’s slow. Usually they return in November.

“A lot of my former renters have said they will go somewhere else until the utilities are improved - people who have come for five or 10 years.” Ms Fraser said she would like to rent her property again, but if she did, that would mean investing in a $20,000 generator that could “run the whole place with an automatic transfer switch and the whole nine yards”.

Mr Forbes said he has to prepare the day prior to handling customers to ensure batteries for his equipment are fully charged because BPL could go out at any moment. 

“There’s some days if you don’t power, people can’t call you,” Mr Forbes said. “Thank God you have a cell phone but, different from that, if I didn’t have a cell phone I couldn’t do no business. Many days I have someone in the office that is the secretary. The phone is off because there’s no power, so customers can’t reach you so you can get jobs.”

While Mr Forbes and Ms Fraser said power interruptions are the bigger problem, they made it clear that Water & Sewerage is still a major issue on the island. Local government representative for The Current, Aldred Albury, said Harbour Island experiences more water interruptions than North Eleuthera.

“It seems as though, in particular, when the electricity’s off on the mainland of North Eleuthera, Harbour Island’s water ends up going off because the pumps that pump the water to Harbour island are not actually at the Water and Sewerage plant. So, once the electricity is off, the water’s not able to pump across to Harbour island, thus causing the water outage in Harbour Island,” he added.

North Eleutherans are willing and ready to follow in Harbour Island’s footsteps and protest for a change. 

“Residents of North Eleuthera have spoken of protests, having a protest like the protest they had in Harbour Island,” Mr Albury explained. “However, as of right now that has not come to fruition but I do believe that it will probably happen.” Both Mr Forbes and Ms Fraser said they would join the protest for improved utilities on Eleuthera.