An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

In 1854 a cholera epi­dem­ic struck Trinidad which left thou­sands of Trinida­di­ans dead, with Port-of-Spain be­ing the worst hit.The pri­ma­ry cause was the abysmal san­i­ta­tion con­di­tions, which saw cesspits and wells be­ing dug along­side each oth­er, with no pipeborne sup­ply. Sir Charles El­liott, the gov­er­nor, made im­me­di­ate at­tempts to ac­quire lands for a reser­voir. The up­per reach­es of the Mar­aval Riv­er were cho­sen as the place for the con­struc­tion of a dam and fil­tra­tion sys­tem. Pipes would be laid along­side the riv­er, but this was met with stiff op­po­si­tion from the De Boissieres, who owned the Champs El­y­sees es­tate, which was along the banks.

Af­ter a bit­ter le­gal bat­tle, the Gov­er­nor passed an or­di­nance al­low­ing the gov­ern­ment lee­way on all river­sides to a max­i­mum of 30 feet, which end­ed the mat­ter.The Mar­aval Wa­ter­works were an ex­ten­sive project, guid­ed by JE Tan­ner, who would lat­er be­come one of the founders of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way in 1876. The near­ly-com­plet­ed wa­ter­works were de­scribed thus in 1857: "The Port-of-Spain wa­ter-works are now near­ly com­plet­ed; the gen­er­al out­lay will have been about 26,000 ster­ling. The town is sup­plied with wa­ter from the Mar­aval riv­er; two reser­voirs and a fil­ter hav­ing been built in that val­ley, at about three miles from town, from which a main pipe, of 12 inch­es bore, re­duced to ten inch­es, brings the wa­ter to the low­er end of the town about three miles and three quar­ters.

It is then dis­trib­uted through every street by branch pipes, vary­ing from two to six inch­es in di­am­e­ter; hy­drants are al­so dis­posed at every 500 feet, more or less, for pro­tec­tion against fire; there are 160 such hy­drants, and they throw wa­ter over the high­est hous­es, with­out in­ter­fer­ing with pri­vate ser­vice pipes."In ad­di­tion to the sev­er­al foun­tains which formed a pub­lic sup­ply, a bath and wash house with two bathing pools and troughs was erect­ed near to the Colo­nial Hos­pi­tal, where the mass­es ca­vort­ed and played and wast­ed the wa­ter freely. The Pub­lic Works De­part­ment, which had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the reser­voir, took great pains to keep it spruce and clean in line with the beau­ti­ful set­ting of Mar­aval.

In 1888 JH Col­lens wrote: "On the left is the house of Mr A K Clair­monte, then as­cend­ing the hill we come at once up­on the reser­voir, and here we should do well to pause for a minute or two. Na­ture and art have joined hand in hand to make the spot a lit­tle par­adise. The slen­der, grace­ful­ly-arched bam­boos, many-hued cro­tons, fra­grant ole­an­ders and dain­ty ferns, with the nu­mer­ous or­na­men­tal shrubs sur­round­ing the basins of bright clear wa­ter, com­bine to make a tout en­sem­ble that is most strik­ing. Step­ping across to the oth­er side of the reser­voir and down to the riv­er, we find charm­ing re­treats and shady nooks wor­thy of an artist's pen­cil."The whole place is scrupu­lous­ly clean, re­flect­ing great cred­it up­on the keep­er of the works, who is an old war­rior with the Bal­akla­va medal, hail­ing from the Emer­ald Isle. If you have the faintest sus­pi­cion of the brogue in your speech, he will ex­hib­it what, in his es­ti­ma­tion, is the gem of the place, a rem­i­nis­cence of the 'ould coun­thry' in the form of a gen­uine live sham­rock plant, fond­ly and proud­ly cher­ished. The wa­ter from this reser­voir de­scends by two prin­ci­pal ar­ter­ies in­to the town, sup­ply­ing thence the dif­fer­ent sub-mains."

The wast­ing of wa­ter was a big is­sue and in the 1890s, Walsh Wright­son, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Works, be­gan to take steps to in­tro­duce rates for the use of wa­ter, ex­tend­ing even to the pub­lic wash­house, which had be­come a main­stay in the town. The Ratepay­ers As­so­ci­a­tion was formed in re­sponse to the im­pend­ing Wa­ter Or­di­nance which pro­posed that wa­ter me­ters be in­stalled in the town to make burgess­es pay for their wa­ter. It was based on re­ports of draft­ed wa­ter in­spec­tors, who re­port­ed freely run­ning taps in the seed­i­er dis­tricts. The as­so­ci­a­tion viewed wa­ter as a right of ex­is­tence, and not a scarce com­mod­i­ty to be bought and sold.The con­flict be­tween the as­so­ci­a­tion and the Colo­nial Gov­ern­ment was the main im­pe­tus be­hind the Wa­ter Ri­ots of 1903, in which 12 lives were lost and the Red House gut­ted by fire.The Mar­aval Reser­voir was trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty in 1912. The Mar­aval Reser­voir is now the prop­er­ty of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and is still a place of beau­ty and seren­i­ty, al­though it is no longer freely open to the pub­lic.