Ali­cia Llanos

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) says the wa­ter cri­sis has tak­en a turn for the worst, with the na­tion's wa­ter re­serves at one-third of what they should be.

This was an­nounced yes­ter­day by the util­i­ty's gen­er­al man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ellen Lewis, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at WASA's head of­fice in St Joseph. Lewis said the sit­u­a­tion "had tak­en a turn for the worst," with the wa­ter re­serves drop­ping sub­stan­tial­ly to ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-third of what they should be. She said Are­na dam had fall­en to 40 per cent, Navet dam to 48, and both Hol­lis and Hills­bor­ough to 50 per cent. Chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer Alan Poon-King said in re­sponse to the dra­mat­ic drop in the wa­ter re­serves, WASA had de­cid­ed to re­view con­tin­u­ous­ly the sup­ply sched­ules. He said WASA was fo­cus­ing on the sup­ply and de­mand changes caused by the low­er­ing wa­ter lev­els. Poon-King said the new sched­ules would fo­cus on pro­vid­ing wa­ter to the pop­u­la­tion at min­i­mum lev­els. He said the ar­eas to be af­fect­ed most would be those with reg­u­lar sup­plies. Poon-King and Lewis com­mend­ed the pub­lic's sup­port of WASA's wa­ter con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme, but said more ef­forts were need­ed to pre­serve re­serves. Lewis could not say how long the re­serves would last, but added that it was up to the pub­lic to de­ter­mine, and urged con­sumers to prac­tise all con­ser­va­tion guide­lines. Al­so at the con­fer­ence were chief cor­po­rate of­fi­cer Dion Ab­dool and pro­gramme man­ag­er Stacey Dil­lion. The con­fer­ence was the fourth held by WASA to keep the pub­lic up­dat­ed on the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion.

Work­ing on projects

With the wa­ter cri­sis be­com­ing more se­vere, WASA's pro­gramme man­ag­er Stacey Dil­lion as­sured the pub­lic that WASA was work­ing on a se­ries of projects to ease the strain on the dwin­dling re­serves. Dil­lion said WASA was de­vel­op­ing a se­ries of ini­tia­tives that stretched be­yond re­pair­ing dam­aged wa­ter lines and leaks. She said last year WASA had de­vel­oped a pro­gramme for im­ple­men­ta­tion this dry sea­son. WASA had or­dered two portable wa­ter treat­ment plants to ser­vice Point Fortin and Pe­nal. These plants would use sur­face wa­ter sources on the Petrotrin com­pound. An­oth­er three plants were or­dered to ser­vice the Fyz­abad, Tal­paro and Matu­ra ar­eas. Fyz­abad and Tal­paro plants would source sup­plies from wells and the Matu­ra plant would use sur­face wa­ter. Dil­lion said be­yond im­me­di­ate ac­tions, WASA had for­mu­lat­ed long-term plans to en­sure that the coun­try would not face an­oth­er wa­ter cri­sis of this pro­por­tion. A de­sali­na­tion plant would be com­mis­sioned in April at Point Fortin, which would have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce 1.2 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter. She said the plant would then be ex­pand­ed by Au­gust to have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce 4.6 mil­lion gal­lons.

An­oth­er long-term plan be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by WASA in the next 18 months would be the es­tab­lish­ment of two oth­er de­sali­na­tion plants, one in La Brea and the oth­er in Cove, To­ba­go. She said the La Brea plant would be able to pro­duce 20 mil­lion gal­lons and the Cove plant five mil­lion. Adding to what Dil­lion had said, chief cor­po­rate of­fi­cer Dion Ab­dool said WASA had part­nered with Petrotrin to use sup­plies from the Beetham waste wa­ter plant. He said wa­ter was tak­en from the Beetham by barge to Petrotrin in Point Fortin. The Beetham waste wa­ter plant sup­plied Petrotrin with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.5 mil­lion gal­lons every oth­er day. Ab­dool al­so called on oth­er pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties to part­ner with WASA to use treat­ed waste wa­ter in their op­er­a­tions, thus al­le­vi­at­ing stress on the dwin­dling sup­plies.