St. Thomas-Water Island Administrator Barbara Petersen led a walk-through of Water Island to assess damage from the effects of Hurricane Earl and assess the recovery efforts.
“The biggest frustration among residents is the lack of restoration of power,” Petersen said, noting that assurances were given that crews from the Water and Power Authority will be on island Saturday to restore electrical power.
Petersen praised the residents who demonstrated their resilient nature in leading the clean-up effort across the island.
“Most of the roads were cleared of debris and fallen trees by the residents," she said. "There is some work ahead to clean up the beaches where a lot of debris is strewn and in some cases, where various beached vessels have littered the shoreline.”
Petersen was accompanied on her tour by representatives from the departments of Housing, Parks and Recreation, Police, Public Works and the Water Island Civic Association.
An aggressive clean-up effort by Public Works continued in both island districts on Friday, with crews working to rid the island of roadside debris.
“Already we have brought in over 500 cubic yards of hurricane-related debris to the landfill on St. Thomas and additional crews will be deployed over the holiday weekend to continue the effort,” said DPW Commissioner Darryl Smalls. “We anticipate that with crews working through the weekend, the vast majority of the clean-up work will be completed by next week.”
WAPA Executive Director Hugo Hodge Jr. said Friday that just about 98 percent of St. John has been restored to power while on St. Croix about 90 percent restoration has been recorded. On St. Thomas the restoration effort is a little slower due to more widespread damage.
“On each island there are ongoing reports of pockets of areas reporting outages, we are trouble shooting these as quickly as possible,” Hodge said, adding that crews from both St. Croix and St. John have been redeployed to St. Thomas where the restoration effort will continue through the holiday weekend.
Hodge also reported Friday that due to increased reliability and modernization of the electrical distribution system, in some areas “there were customers who didn’t lose power while Earl’s effects were bearing down on the territory earlier this week.”
Waste Management Authority Director May Adams Cornwall reported Friday that all of the wastewater treatment plants are now operating on commercial power, solid-waste collection is back to normal and a focus is now on maintaining the bin sites across the island.
Planning and Natural Resources Commissioner Robert Mathes reminded both visitors and residents of the territory that they should refrain from swimming in Virgin Islands beaches until such time as water quality testing has been completed.
“Depending on the availability of personnel from the water testing labs, we will make every attempt to have the testing completed by Monday. The public will be advised of the test results and when it is safe to again swim in the waters of the territories beaches. While we are not closing beaches and especially on this long holiday weekend, we are asking all beach-goers to use extreme caution when entering the water,” Mathes said.
