Bahamas News
Winter Action Plan launched by Bahamas Power & Light
Nassau, Bahamas – January 30, 2020 – Bahamas Power and Light (BPL), announced the launch of their “Winter Action Plan” on Tuesday with work set to commence on a generator unit at Station B of the Clifton Pier Power Station.
This is the first step in a comprehensive months long plan to ensure working generation units are properly brought offline for annual servicing and maintenance which in turn should extend the life of the unit. Much of the maintenance needs have been neglected over previous years leaving aging generation units teetering on the brink, and causing intermittent shut downs as the machines labor under untenable conditions.
“Part of our commitment to righting the ship at BPL is implementing a comprehensive machine servicing and maintenance plan during the non-peak seasons,” said Whitney Heastie, CEO of Bahamas Power and Light.
“Our goal is to make better use of those times to properly service and maintain the equipment and generation units we have on hand to ensure they are ready for the high-demand summer months. Proper procedures have been ignored and neglected for far too long, causing catastrophic system failures – we are working to make that a thing of the past by doing the necessary work to service the equipment.”
Generation unit DA13 has been targeted for the initial phase of the Winter Action Plan. DA13 has been in service at Clifton Pier since 2006, and accounts for up to 18 MW of power on a daily basis. The unit will be taken offline for a full system diagnostic along with needed servicing before being brought back onto the grid in early March. The work schedule is designed to avoid any disruption in service for customers as the work on the machine commences.
“Much of the work we can and should be doing in the non-peak season better prepares us to have the necessary capacity during the high peak seasons – like the summer. As we have stated before, the entire team here at BPL is committed to make sure we avoid a repeat of the summer we just went through, and we know righting the ship starts with servicing and maintaining the units that we have. We won’t waver in that commitment to our customers. The Winter Action Plan is another critical piece of our overall plan along with last month’s launch of the new Station A, with much more to come,” Heastie concluded.
PRESS RELEASE, BPL, JANUARY 28, 2020
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TheBahamas, March 17, 2023 – The FBI is investigating a woman’s ‘suspicious’ death on a Carnival Cruise ship in February. The unnamed woman and her husband boarded the Carnival Sunshine on February 27th, for a trip to the Bahamas, but she was dead before they arrived in the port in The Bahamas. 
The FBI said Carnival’s team had administered life saving measures when the woman was reported unresponsive, but they were unsuccessful. The body and the woman’s husband were released to the Bahamian authorities when the cruise arrived in the country.
In a statement shared with US media houses, Carnival Cruises claimed the death has been a natural one. The Nassau Guardian said a source told them the police findings had concurred with that assessment saying it was a “normal sudden death of a tourist who wasn’t feeling well.”
The FBI was waiting for the cruise and when it got back to South Carolina on March 4th, they immediately boarded and began to investigate the room based on ‘evidence of a crime.’ The FBI also searched the couple’s car.
No updates have been shared to contradict the currently established cause of death.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TheBahamas, March 17, 2023 – “If you don’t like it, go to another beach!” Is what Aaron John, an Education Officer from The Bahamas National Trust jokingly tells our news team about sargassum blooms; his quip, motivated by the necessity of nature when pit against the notion that there is a real threat when the stinky seaweed makes its annual appearance.
John can admit, he says, that Sargassum isn’t very pretty but life isn’t all about aesthetics and in this instance that ugly patch serves a purpose.
“We love our sandy beaches, but in order to keep them we need Sargassum. When storms come, they wash away all the sand off the beach but sargassum acts as a mulch to protect the sand from water erosion. It doesn’t look good, it
doesn’t feel good but we need it.”
He said it also provides a habitat for small crustaceans, crabs, and insects that are all necessary to our ecosystem and islanders have found use for the weed.
“Historically, (in The Bahamas) we have been using sargassum as fertilizer, especially in the family Islands as far back as I know,” he said. “Birds don’t go on the beach unless there is Sargassum and what do they do? they feed – it’s beautiful.”
He encouraged residents to just leave it be if they came across it.
Sargassum isn’t harmful to humans, except for people with respiratory issues who may find the rotten egg smell triggers asthma. Despite this, it’s not advisable to walk through the weeds which may hide sharp rocks and bottles or vulnerable animals.
Experts say Sargassum blooms began to increase in size around 2011 and have continued to get bigger and bigger since. This year‘s bloom is around 5000 miles long and 300 miles wide and visible from space.
“I know it’s not a general outlook, but I would like to change the perspective on sargassum,” John said, pointing out The Bahamas National Trust is actively working to decrease alarm over the less worrisome events like sargassum as it raises the profile on the environmentally devastating.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, March 17, 2023 – The Turks and Caicos’ Bahamas Diaspora Office is moving closer and closer to opening day, following the Cabinet’s approval for the signing of a lease agreement.
The lease will be signed with FINCEN ltd in the Bahamas. Several weeks ago, Arlington Musgrove, Minister of Immigration confirmed to our news team that the location had been found and was being finalized; now a lease is
approved at the Cabinet level.
The interest in the TCI from TC Bahamians was evident in the diaspora meetings held in early February. The two meetings held in Nassau and Grand Bahama were completely full and over-subscribed by hundreds.
It’s interest which the Government hopes will translate to real life population growth, bolstering the local population before the native population ‘goes extinct’.
The Opposition PDM is on the record with what it feels is a far more viable solution to a dwindling native population; seek out the country’s own citizens and bring them back home.
Cabinet did not state when the office will open.
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