Ali­cia Llanos

Wa­ter lev­els in the coun­try's reser­voirs are now at 35 per cent.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by new WASA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer An­drew Smith at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the au­thor­i­ty's head­quar­ters St Joseph. Smith con­firmed that wa­ter lev­els in the na­tion's reser­voirs now stood at 35 per cent, al­most half of what it should be this time of year. He said the re­cent rain­fall had not af­fect­ed the low wa­ter lev­els, but had slowed the rate at which the dams were dry­ing up. Smith, a British na­tion­al whose ap­point­ment took ef­fect on April 12, said the coun­try was still in a drought and re­mind­ed cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue all con­ser­va­tion ef­forts.

Dis­cussing his ap­point­ment as WASA CEO, Smith said the is­sues be­ing faced by WASA were not un­com­mon and were sim­i­lar in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply com­pa­nies. He said the main prob­lems faced by WASA were lack of cus­tomer ser­vice, fail­ure to meet cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions and the need for bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture. He said, how­ev­er, that he found the team at WASA had an "ap­petite" for change and shared the same vi­sion as to where WASA need­ed to be. Smith said he was con­fi­dent that change could be made and WASA was cur­rent­ly three months in­to an 18-month re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme. Up­dat­ing the pop­u­la­tion on the au­thor­i­ty's ef­forts to sus­tain the wa­ter sup­ply, he said a main in Diego Mar­tin had just been com­plet­ed to pro­vide a more sus­tain­able sup­ply of wa­ter to res­i­dents.

Smith said a wa­ter pres­sure man­age­ment scheme had been in­tro­duced. He said it en­tailed the low­er­ing of wa­ter pres­sure in some of the coun­try's mains to ease the strain put on pipes and to re­duce wa­ter wastage in the form of leaks. Smith said WASA had be­gun to source wa­ter from new wells that were cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing two mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter a day. He said by May, the wells should be pro­duc­ing an ex­tra mil­lion a day. He said since Feb­ru­ary, 13,000 leaks had been re­paired. Smith said for fu­ture plans, the au­thor­i­ty had con­tract­ed Meko­roti, an Is­raeli com­pa­ny to share their ex­per­tise on WASA's fu­ture projects. He said Meko­roti had been hired to pro­vide de­sign as­sis­tance, en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion pro­cure­ment. When ques­tioned about past al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion at WASA, Smith said he came to T&T with no bag­gage or hid­den agen­das.

He said he was en­sur­ing that frame­work was be­ing put in place to curb and pre­vent cor­rupt ac­tions. Smith urged the pub­lic not to for­get the lessons they had learned dur­ing the drought and to con­tin­ue wa­ter preser­va­tion prac­tices.