In September 2017, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported, citing a statement from Consolidated Water, that the company's British Virgin Islands desalination plants were idle without power after Hurricane Irma. The affected sites on Tortola and Jost Van Dyke had a combined output of about 3,000 m³/day (800,000 US gallons per day), around 3 per cent of the group's capacity. The structures appeared intact, but without electricity their condition could not be tested. Plants in the Bahamas escaped damage.
The report showed how heavily island desalination depended on the grid: even plants that looked undamaged stopped once the storm knocked out the power supply.