In the mid­dle of the worst drought in Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1987, a truck be­long­ing to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has been dis­cov­ered pump­ing drink­ing wa­ter in­to a swim­ming pool in a pri­vate res­i­dence un­der­go­ing ren­o­va­tion in the up­scale neigh­bour­hood of West­moor­ings.

WASA in a state­ment last night said the wa­ter was re­quest­ed for "con­struc­tion pur­pos­es," for a house it is leas­ing for its for­eign CEO. Tipped off by a pho­to­graph sent by a res­i­dent of the La Riv­iera high-rise apart­ment, two Guardian jour­nal­ists caught WASA em­ploy­ees pump­ing wa­ter in­to the pool lo­cat­ed at Colum­bus Cir­cle in West­moor­ings on Thurs­day night. When the WASA em­ploy­ees re­alised that they were be­ing pho­tographed and filmed, they im­me­di­ate­ly un­hinged the hose from the wa­ter wag­on and drove off. One of the WASA em­ploy­ees was heard re­peat­ing the li­cence plate num­ber of the Guardian. Less than five min­utes lat­er, a van­load of po­lice­men ar­rived on the scene, with one say­ing that they had been told of two sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters in the neigh­bour­hood. Faced with the drought and rapid­ly-de­clin­ing wa­ter lev­els in the na­tion's re­sevoirs, WASA has re­peat­ed­ly ap­pealed to the pub­lic to use less wa­ter in the last two months.

The au­thor­i­ty has al­so crim­i­nalised the use of hoses to wash cars and wa­ter lawns and has re­duced the reg­u­lar­i­ty of sup­ply to house­holds across the na­tion. On Mon­day, WASA of­fi­cials told a news con­fer­ence that the coun­try's wa­ter sit­u­a­tion was ap­proach­ing cri­sis lev­els.

The wa­ter lev­els in the Ca­roni Are­na dam, which ac­counts for 35 per cent of the coun­try's wa­ter sup­ply, had fall­en to 40 per cent, the Navet dam to 48, and both Hol­lis and Hills­bor­ough to 50 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the util­i­ty's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Ellen Lewis. Lewis com­mend­ed the pub­lic's sup­port of WASA's wa­ter con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme, but said more ef­forts were need­ed to pre­serve re­serves. Last night, the util­i­ty is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment: "WASA is in the process of leas­ing the prop­er­ty?to use as ac­com­mo­da­tion for the for­eign na­tion­al who has been iden­ti­fied to fill the po­si­tion of Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise.?Up­on in­quiries we learnt?the prop­er­ty is be­ing ren­o­vat­ed by the own­er and that the wa­ter was re­quest­ed for con­struc­tion pur­pos­es." Told of WASA's ex­pla­na­tion that a pool full of wa­ter was need­ed to ren­o­vate a house, one of the coun­try's most ex­pe­ri­enced builders scoffed au­di­bly and said: "For ac­tu­al con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, you would need 15 to 20 gal­lons a day for the mor­tar for plas­ter­ing. You would get wa­ter for the con­crete from the readymix com­pa­nies and there would be need for a small amount of wa­ter for drink­ing and wash­ing up pur­pose. You would not need a pool full of wa­ter."

WASA CEO promis­es probe

Con­tact­ed last night, WASA's act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive, Jim Lee Young, said it is against the util­i­ty's pol­i­cy to pro­vide wa­ter to fill a res­i­den­tial swim­ming pool. "I can cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that we will not sup­ply wa­ter for use in a swim­ming pool. If a con­struc­tion site re­quests wa­ter for con­struc­tion pur­pos­es, and is a le­git­i­mate WASA cus­tomer, we will pro­vide wa­ter for that."

Stress­ing that he had not seen the re­port on the is­sue on CNC3 last night, an an­gry Lee Young de­scribed the WASA truck pro­vid­ing wa­ter to a swim­ming pool as "an abuse of what we are try­ing to do. I feel very strong­ly about this. That is not on." He promised an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter.