[LINK] "Antigua: Surrounded by Sea but Catchments are Empty"

[rfmcdonald]

The Inter Press Service's Kenton X. Chance describes how the Caribbean island of Antigua is coping, or not, with an increasingly intense drought.

Antiguan Veronica Yearwood no longer panics when she hears that the rainfall forecast for the tiny Caribbean island is again lower than average rainfall.

Not because she is a hydrologist in the water department of the Antigua Public Utilities Authority. “We went passed that stage. We did panic, but we have now settled down to the reality that the drought is really going to be a very bad one; it’s not going to end tomorrow,” she told IPS.

“So we’ve decided to look at ways to mitigate, use what we have sufficiently,” Yearwood said.

Antigua, a 108.5-square mile island of 80,000 people in the northern Caribbean, has been experiencing severe drought conditions for the past two years.

“All of our surface water catchments are bone dry. Our aquifers have shown a decline in the level of the water, and we’ve moved from 60 per cent desalination to 90 per cent desalination,” Yearwood told IPS, adding that citizens are coping “as best as they can.”