Several CedarBridge students learned a valuable lesson yesterday ? that water is Bermuda?s most precious commodity.

Steve McMinn, Principal Engineer at the Prospect Reverse Osmosis Plant, taught a group of the school?s Marine Science students about water treatment.

?Sixty percent of our drinking water is rainwater,? Mr. McMinn said. ?This is unique among developed countries. It is more common in less developed countries.?

Citizens of Las Vegas, Nevada, consume 180 gallons of water per person, per day, but in Bermuda people use 30 gallons.

The Prospect site makes salty water drawn from 100 local wells drinkable.

?Potentially there are three million gallons of treated water in there,? Mr. McMinn said pointing to the interior of the plant.

But he said it was against the law to drill a well in the ground and drink the water, because it has to be treated.

?Sewage from cesspits has seeped into the ground water which has become contaminated over the years,? Mr. McMinn said.

Untreated well water can be used for flushing toilets but not drinking.

He said Government and privately owned treatment plants provide water to just ten percent of the Island?s homes and the other 90 percent rely on rain and water trucks.

?Government water costs $15 per 1,000 gallons,? Mr. McMinn said. ?But water from a truck costs $75 per 1,000 gallons.?

Mr. McMinn said there were five water treatment plants on the Island ? one at Port Royal, another near the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute, and two others in St. George?s.

Works and Engineering Minister Ashfield Devent, who accompanied the students, said it was important to teach students the importance of water conservation

?Some people say that young people are not as conservative as older generations before them and I think its very important that we get that message out to those people,? he said.

?I think that historically part of Bermuda?s culture was water and water conservation considering we that we live in a country where we don?t have rivers and we don?t have a huge supply of potable water, so I think its important now to make young people understand that its up to them to conserve this very important resource.

?I was just reading somewhere, where in the last 100 years they say that the world population has grown three times but the use of water has multiplied six-fold.

?So again, it?s important that each and every one of us realise that this crucial commodity to life, we must preserve it.?