?Demain il fera beau? informs the smiling météo-lady, implying we must not expect any rain. ?Mauvais temps demain? means a rainy day with perhaps one or more God-given holidays for schools.

Have you ever wondered whether we must refer to rainy days as bad and sunny days as good? What will be the consequence of having only good days for our reservoirs so closely monitored by the CWA? Mauritius already seems to require torrential rains regularly.

Next comes something you hear and read so often that you hardly pay attention to it, ?boil tap-water vigorously during at least fifteen minutes?. There seems to be no agreement between the CWA and the Ministry of Health, the former tells you the water it supplies is ?potable? but the latter seems to disagree. have you ever read or heard about discontinuing this practice? Go on boiling water during your lifetime!

Ever wondered how much it costs to boil the water Mauritians drink? Do not forget the all-essential sterilization of the requirements of babies, they must also be included.

For a population of only one million we must boil two million litres of water daily. This requires 600 million BTU/day. If the fifteen minutes extra boiling is included the energy requirements is more than doubled, about 1200 million BTU/day. This energy must be derived from natural sources such as coal, natural gas, fuel oil etc. A simple calculation tells us that we require 9 000 gallons of fuel oil or 2.5 million cuft of gas daily. For one year we need 6.5 million gallons of fuel oil or 912 million cuft of gas!

In the above calulations the efficiency of all conversions has been considered to be 100% this is unattainable, thus the energy requirements is far greater.

Do you now realize how much you pay other countries so as to make tap-water drinkable? At the same time you must accept to pay for the inefficiency at certain levels.

With a very limited amount of grey matter one can decide that it is high time the CWA gives due consideration to its often mud-obstructed ilter-beds and rusted distribution pipelines. The CEB must not only distribute eco-lamps but liaise with the CWA to do the needful and thus decrease its bank liabilities.

Dusruth DEWAN Former Rector SSS