It must be the water!' with Julian Daniel, Montserrat Utilities Ltd, Montserrat, Caribbean

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15 minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders from around the globe. My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Julian Daniel, the managing director of Montserrat Utilities Limited on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean.
[00:00:22] Piers Clark: Julian, brilliant to connect with you,
[00:00:24] Julian Daniel: Great, Piers. I'm happy to be here with you.
[00:00:27] Piers Clark: I'd like to start with a little bit about your background. So tell me what did you do that led you to becoming the managing director of Montserrat Utilities Limited?
[00:00:37] Julian Daniel: I'm a  Montserratian and my mother is also from Anguilla. I've been involved in project management, and project supervision, quality control for a number of years.
[00:00:48] Julian Daniel: I had my own consultancy start off since 1995 and since then I've been working throughout the Caribbean. I was overseas in Anguilla. I came in 2023 to set up a project and I was asked if I could help out with Montserrat Utilities and I said yes.
[00:01:07] Julian Daniel: So things come full circle because I was what we call a water man. I used to work with the then Montserrat Water Authority back in the eighties.
[00:01:17] Piers Clark: For people who aren't familiar, Montserrat is a small Caribbean island, but clearly the most beautiful one, and Anguilla is a neighboring island.
[00:01:25] Piers Clark: Now let's talk about Montserrat. How big is it? How many people live there?
[00:01:28] Julian Daniel: Montserrat is 39 square miles before the volcanic eruption. We are more than 40 square miles now. The volcanic eruptions over time have led to addition of square footage to the island.
[00:01:40] Julian Daniel: The volcano has been pretty peaceful since at least 15 years, but July 18th will make the 30th anniversary of the eruption.
[00:01:50] Julian Daniel: We are a volcanic island. From  Montserrat, we can see Antigua, Saint Kitts, Nevis, and  Guadeloupe. We're bordered by those territories, 15 minute to 20 minute flights away. It's a small population, 4,300 people.
[00:02:07] Piers Clark: Now you mentioned July the 18th, 1995. I happen to know that that date, or at least July the 18th. It's an important date for you personally as well.
[00:02:16] Piers Clark: Do you wanna just share about why?
[00:02:19] Julian Daniel: It's my wedding anniversary date and it's my wife's birthday as well, so it is permanently etched in my memory.
[00:02:28] Piers Clark: I think you're a lucky man 'cause this means there is no way you are ever going to forget.
[00:02:33] Piers Clark: So going back, on July the 18th, 1995, a catastrophic volcanic eruption happened. It essentially wiped out or made uninhabitable over half the island, and the population dropped significantly. And as you say, you've now got 4,000 people essentially living on one side of the island.
[00:02:55] Piers Clark: You are responsible for both the water and wastewater services. So just tell me a little bit about those assets. What happened at volcano time that shifted it, and what were the assets that were put in place to enable the then mobile population? 'cause I assume a lot of people move from one side of the island to the other to escape the lava flows.
[00:03:15] Julian Daniel: We had quite a bit of infrastructure. The capital Plymouth and the most inhabitable areas were the areas that were decimated by the volcano and evacuated.
[00:03:27] Julian Daniel: It was very challenging to keep things viable given that the remaining population has moved to the northern part of the island. So that meant that we had quite a contraction in our customer base, our electricity production, we lost our generators, and we lost the use of some major springs and wells.
[00:03:50] Julian Daniel: It was quite devastating. Two thirds of the island was run there off limits, and two thirds of the population left the island. The infrastructure that was put in couldn't be used anymore. So we had to try to upgrade what was available in the northern side of the island.
[00:04:12] Piers Clark: And for people who aren't aware, Montserrat is what's called a British overseas territory, which means you come under the umbrella of British support.
[00:04:21] Piers Clark: So after the volcano erupted, I believe it was the British Army that came and put in some emergency assets to enable the island to continue functioning. Is that right?
[00:04:31] Julian Daniel: Yeah, we've had the significant input from the British government, from the agencies, including the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth office. Now we have the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, so quite a lot of financial assistance and technical assistance was put in to help with our infrastructure and keep us viable.
[00:04:55] Piers Clark: And of course, the point is that after a volcano eruption, you are front page news and everybody mobilizes to assist, but that was 30 years ago.
[00:05:05] Piers Clark: A lot of those assets are now coming to the natural end of their life. And so you are now managing director of Montserrat Utilities with some aging infrastructure. How are you approaching that challenge?
[00:05:18] Julian Daniel: I've been with the  Montserrat Utilities for one year now, tasked with keeping the utility going, but I like to exceed expectations. So I've been looking at the infrastructure, looking at the priority areas that were identified in the past and that I identify now and really put forward some cases for funding.
[00:05:38] Julian Daniel: I must say thanks to our local government and the British government, we have been successful to rehabilitate our springs, to increase our reservoir storage for water and our infrastructure, our distribution and transmission network for our water, and to also deal with our electricity.
[00:06:00] Julian Daniel: And also I'm looking to try to incorporate some additional megawatts of solar power as well, which also impacts our water production because now pumping would become a lot cheaper and the cost to deliver the water and electricity would significantly decrease.
[00:06:20] Julian Daniel: I am happy and I'm pleased just within a year being able to achieve quite a lot. I don't say no, I don't give up. I keep knocking on doors.
[00:06:30] Piers Clark: Having met with you and worked with you over an intense period, albeit a short one, I personally experienced your resilience.
[00:06:37] Piers Clark: And you mentioned the springs. One of the best days of 2024 for me was the day when we got up very early and we drove to the bottom of the tropical Caribbean jungle and we then hiked for about two, three hours through the jungle to the spring mouth where you were then showing me the glorious water that was tricking directly outta the rocks and the work that needs to be done to rehabilitate that. And for people who aren't familiar, what was the work?
[00:07:06] Julian Daniel: I tell people, that Montserrat has the best water in the world. I have been held to that word, and I've gotten it tested recently as well. And it is the best water in the world.
[00:07:16] Julian Daniel: What we've been doing is to try and make our spring areas and our catchment area a lot more resilient and to maximize on the production that comes from our spring. So we clean the area, we build catchment boxes and secure the whole area so that there are no intruders.
[00:07:35] Julian Daniel: We make sure that the water remains as pristine as possible because the springs are in protected forest areas. We are very keen on ensuring that the quality remains top-notch.
[00:07:49] Julian Daniel: And talking about the hike, there's still springs that are not in our system yet. There needs to be additional infrastructure, so we are also looking at incorporating those springs 'cause we don't want any water to be wasted at all.
[00:08:03] Julian Daniel: In the future too, we are also looking at water bottling and bulk water shipping. So, we are looking at multiple ways of raising revenue for the utility and for the island.
[00:08:15] Piers Clark: You have every drop of water sorted through miles of volcanic rock. It comes out pristine, clear, and the challenge is getting at those 3, 4, 5 miles through the jungle back to where the population is.
[00:08:29] Piers Clark: It's not actually a challenge of cleaning the water, it's about ensuring that there is an ingress, especially in a tropical environment where plants and such are growing at a phenomenal rate.
[00:08:40] Piers Clark: So Julian, you mentioned that one of the things you're looking at is bottled water. So what's the thinking behind that?
[00:08:46] Julian Daniel: Apart from the purity of our water straight from the springs, the taste is phenomenal. And then when I looked around and realized how many centenarians there were in Montserrat, who were living long, happy lives, it came to me. It must be the water.
[00:09:01] Piers Clark: I love it. "It must be the water", that has got to be the slogan for the Montserrat bottled water.
[00:09:06] Piers Clark: Now, one of the things that's beautiful about Montserrat is because it's an isolated community and it's relatively small, as you say, 4,000 people, but you've got quite a lot of assets for 4,000 people.
[00:09:18] Piers Clark: Can you just share the number of pumping stations, number of wellheads, the number of sewage treatment works, and it's because of the geography of Montserrat?
[00:09:28] Julian Daniel: We have about 13 reservoirs, and we have about three main pumping stations because of the topography. So most of the water from the springs are gravity fed, but then to get it from the reservoirs to certain parts in the north, they have to be pumped.
[00:09:45] Julian Daniel: We have six main springs. We have one in the east of the island that is offline because of the volcano, but it have a lot of potential and we are looking through a major project or even probably private investment to be able to get that spring also online.
[00:10:02] Julian Daniel: We have aging assets in the northern part of the island, so we have to work on replacing a lot of our infrastructure, which some of the funding that we are getting will help us to replace the underground infrastructure in two main village areas.
[00:10:18] Julian Daniel: Just like any other place, just like any large country, there's the costs and so on that we have to deal with. But the challenge with a smaller population, the economies of scale are against us. So in order to try and mitigate against that, we have to look towards, for instance, exporting of water and adding value to our product.
[00:10:40] Piers Clark: Thank you for that because you've made exactly the point I was hoping we'd get to. 4,000 people on a beautiful Caribbean island, but because of how the water flows down the volcanic face, you need to be managing in an enormous suite of assets for this small population.
[00:10:55] Piers Clark: But the really interesting thing here is the quality of your water is world class. And actually one of the ways you can rebuild the economy and rebuild the stature of Montserrat is actually through differentiating the quality of your water and exporting that to other islands.
[00:11:12] Piers Clark: It's wonderful, Julian, to hear that the utility in this precious, beautiful island is being led by someone with your experience and open-mindedness to innovation and trying out new things and seeing the water assets as something that will differentiate the utility going forward.
[00:11:32] Piers Clark: Now, Julian, we like to finish by asking, what advice would you give your younger self? So let's imagine you could go back 35 years before the volcano erupted. What advice would you give a young Julian Daniel?
[00:11:45] Julian Daniel: Expect the unexpected. The unexpected is inevitable and one of the main ways to prepare for the unexpected is to expect it. So I would give myself that advice because, you know, you say life would throw you curve balls, for instance, nobody's thinking that a volcano will er rock where you live and that life will be disrupted.
[00:12:09] Julian Daniel: I was able to work for the Montserrat Water Authority when I was younger, and now the managing director of the utility. That's unexpected. And so to expect the unexpected and to prepare for it because you never know, you don't burn your bridges.
[00:12:27] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Julian Daniel, managing director of Montserrat Utilities Limited on the beautiful Caribbean island of Montserrat, and we've been talking about what life has been like responding to the volcano that erupted on the 18th of July, 1995.
[00:12:46] Piers Clark: I hope you can join us again next time. Thank you.