In­vest­ing in wa­ter tanks and pumps has cost cit­i­zens more than a bil­lion dol­lars as al­most all of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fers from an in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply es­pe­cial­ly rur­al ar­eas.

The in­ad­e­quate sup­ply of wa­ter by WASA and wa­ter sched­ul­ing has meant that un­like de­vel­oped coun­tries, cit­i­zens have had to fork out thou­sands of dol­lars to buy tanks, col­lec­tive­ly cre­at­ing a bil­lion dol­lar sec­tor.

In fact, Bhag­wans­ingh’s group mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Bali­ram John told the Busi­ness Guardian that the sale of these items has al­ways been good over the years, not­ing that some­one build­ing a home for the first time, just like the av­er­age home­own­er, will have at least two tanks and a pump to start off with.

The av­er­age price for a 1,000 tank is $1,700 plus VAT but this can cost as much as $2,500 plus VAT de­pend­ing on the hard­ware where it is bought.

A 400 gal­lon tank can cost around $900 plus VAT. The cheap­est pump starts at $1,700 de­pend­ing on its horse­pow­er.

Ac­cord­ing to some home­own­ers the wa­ter sup­ply is just not good enough hence a tank has be­come es­sen­tial.

But this prob­lem is noth­ing new.

“With­out wa­ter you can do noth­ing, not even cook. My sis­ter in Pa­lo Seco has about nine tanks of dif­fer­ent sizes. Some on a height, some of the ground be­cause in the coun­try wa­ter is al­ways a prob­lem for years and years,” one res­i­dent told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian (SBG).

And over­time John ex­plained, most home­own­ers would al­so in­vest in ad­di­tion­al tanks to en­sure they have a steady sup­ply of wa­ter.

Fur­ther, he said shut­downs by the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) have added to the sales as in many ar­eas peo­ple do not re­ceive wa­ter sev­en days a week.

In fact, the av­er­age res­i­dent gets wa­ter less than three days a week.

“Many in­vest in more tanks be­cause they said the wa­ter sup­ply in not re­li­able enough,” John added.

On­ly last week WASA an­nounced that cus­tomers in parts of Cen­tral Trinidad served by the Her­mitage Boost­er Sta­tion are cur­rent­ly with­out a pipe borne wa­ter sup­ply due to a de­fec­tive pump at the fa­cil­i­ty.

On­go­ing ex­ten­sive re­pair works were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed days lat­er.

Re­gard­ing com­mer­cial in­vest­ments in tanks and pumps John said busi­ness­es would in­clude such fix­tures any­way when con­struct­ing to en­sure re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

Checks with oth­er hard­ware re­vealed that from 600-gal­lon wa­ter tanks all the way up to 1,000-gal­lon ones, hard­ware own­ers have been see­ing a con­sis­tent flow of cus­tomers.

Doc’s Hard­ware in Diego Mar­tin said from last Sep­tem­ber it has no­ticed more peo­ple buy­ing more tanks.

So too has William H Scott which not­ed that more peo­ple have al­so been ask­ing about tanks and pumps with­in re­cent times.

Sales Man­ag­er of the Elec­tri­cal In­dus­tries Group (EIZ) Faiz Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny has seen a 12 per cent in­crease in sales from 2020 to 2021.

EIZ is a whole­saler and its pop­u­lar tanks have been the 1000 and the 400 gal­lons.

And for those homes that can­not af­ford suf­fi­cient tanks they have to re­ly on a truck born sup­ply from WASA which is free once the home­own­er is a reg­is­tered cus­tomer. If not reg­is­tered then $500 is nor­mal­ly the fee for tuck borne wa­ter from pri­vate sup­pli­ers.

And with price in­crease slapped on many goods, so too has the price of tanks in­creased.

Ac­cord­ing to John the raw ma­te­ri­als like the pel­lets have gone up on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, forc­ing an in­crease in the cost of wa­ter tanks.

WASA mak­ing strides -Min­is­ter

While Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­knowl­edged T&T has a wa­ter prob­lem he has as­sured that greater ef­fort is be­ing made to bring wa­ter to the peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those most in need.

He said projects be­ing rolled out by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and WASA over the last four months would show “se­ri­ous ef­forts be­ing made to im­prove wa­ter sup­ply across the coun­try as well as the tes­ti­mo­ni­als of so many cus­tomers who are now re­ceiv­ing wa­ter in their com­mu­ni­ty af­ter 20 and 30 years.”

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, some of these ini­tia­tives in­clude Pitch Road Boost­er Re­fur­bish­ment, Mor­vant (17,000) ben­e­fi­cia­ries, Low­er Mendez Dri­ve Boost­er (15,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Man­zanil­la Boost­er (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Guaico/Tamana Boost­er (500 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Sub­adar Trace, Williamsville, Em­BD Sites (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries) Up­per Wharf Trace Boost­er (500 ben­e­fi­cia­ries) and Brazil San Raphael Boost­er (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries).

“We have had some cus­tomers not hav­ing wa­ter in some cas­es for 40 and 50 years and they are now get­ting wa­ter for the very first time and we will ac­cel­er­ate this mo­men­tum in 2022 and 2023.

“We do ac­knowl­edge we have a lot of ground to cov­er be­cause this wa­ter prob­lem has been plagu­ing this coun­try for far too long. There are some ar­eas which will con­tin­ue to strug­gle but we are work­ing to­wards it,” Gon­za­les main­tained.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that there’s a wa­ter deficit in the coun­try hence the rea­son for wa­ter sched­ul­ing.

“We have built a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ties un­der HDC and pri­vate de­vel­op­ments all over Trinidad and To­ba­go and what has not hap­pened over the years is in­vest­ments in im­prov­ing and fix­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter.

“That is the rea­son why you have wa­ter sched­ul­ing be­cause you have to share and re­dis­trib­ute wa­ter to all those new com­mu­ni­ties and hence the rea­son why some com­mu­ni­ties get wa­ter three days a week, four days a week, two days a week and in some in­stances one day a week be­cause you are try­ing to cut up the lim­it­ed re­sources you have,” Gon­za­les ex­plained.

So how will WASA im­prove its stock to meet the grow­ing de­mand?

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter in 2022 there will be a huge thrust to im­prove wa­ter pro­duc­tion by en­hanc­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of dams and reser­voirs and go­ing af­ter ground wa­ter sources, thus re­duc­ing wa­ter sched­ul­ing.

“There will be no need to re­dis­trib­ute and to sep­a­rate the lim­it­ed re­sources. If you bring more wa­ter in­to the grid it means more peo­ple will have 24/7 wa­ter at the same time,” Gon­za­les said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said pro­duc­tion has al­so in­creased at Ca­roni wa­ter treat­ment plant and at Hol­lis dam.

Fur­ther, Gon­za­les said the min­istry has be­gun col­lab­o­ra­tion with Her­itage where a num­ber of wa­ter wells from Petrotrin will be hand­ed over to WASA which will be re­fur­bished and be brought in­to op­er­a­tion to im­prove sup­ply to com­mu­ni­ties South-West Trinidad.

And ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter pur­chas­ing of tanks and pumps at this time of the year is nor­mal as cit­i­zens pre­pare for the dry sea­son.

“Even in ar­eas of 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply, cit­i­zens buy tanks as a back up mea­sure. In ar­eas of 24/4 sup­ply, cit­i­zens buy tanks to give them­selves piece of mind in the event of dis­rup­tions to their sup­ply,” he said.

But what is the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of wa­ter tanks? Is there a plas­tic re­cy­cling plan?

Gon­za­les said SWM­COL will be rolling out its re­cy­cling pro­gramme of which plas­tics will play a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent.