Senior Reporterkevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
Kelvin Romain, acting Chief Executive Officer of the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), is blaming problems at the Desalcott plant in Point Lisas for water shortages in south Trinidad.
At a media conference at WASA’s St Joseph head office on Thursday, Romain expressed concern over numerous media reports of water shortages.
On Wednesday there were major protests in Mayaro, San Francique and Woodland.
Romain said it grabbed his attention when there was an outage at the Caroni Water Treatment Plant on August 25. WASA rectified that issue, and then Desalcott suffered an outage due to a power failure at its Point Lisas Desalination Plant (PLDP). Desalcott was able to resume production but not 100 per cent and the shortfall is hampering WASA’s effort to return customers to regular water schedules.
“I was informed that the plant suffers from some conductivity issue, meaning that on the raw water side of its operation, the salinity is a bit high, which impedes the processing of their water production,” Romain explained.
“How it affects us: The difference we are talking about is about three million gallons, so while we expect to receive 40 million gallons, we are actually receiving 37 and sometimes 38. That two to three million difference affects our extremities and our high elevation in terms of pressure,” he added.
He said WASA has been trying to supplement the shortfall in supply throughout Trinidad.
Commenting on Wednesday’s protest in Union Village, Mayaro, Romain said there was a clogged strainer at the Navet Water Treatment Plant.
“We did rectify that. Actually, I can say that the production would have increased as well, so we should see the benefit. We also saw some issues at our TCO Booster, which we rectified, so for those customers who would have experienced shortages on the Mayaro side, I am assured by our operations team that within 24 hours, that system is supposed to be back up and running,” he said.
In cases where customers have been without water for two to four weeks, Romain said that was unsatisfactory, unacceptable and untenable and WASA had medium to long-term projects to rectify issues and ensure supplies to under-served and unserved communities. In the interim, WASA is working to ensure it supplements supplies.
Romain promised to personally monitor areas where there had been an extended supply shortfall.
However, he said, WASA could not negate the fact that the country experienced a small drought that affected its system, as there was an increased demand while there were still issues at the PLDP.
He said the level at the Hollis Reservoir in Valencia dropped from 55 per cent to under 50 in one week and while there was rainfall over the last two days, WASA is hoping for consistent showers to replenish the reservoir to an acceptable level.
The long-term average for Hollis is 70-72 per cent. Should the volume reduce further, WASA may need to curtail production.
The hot spell has also affected water levels at the Hillsborough, Arena and Navet reservoirs. All others are in the 90 percentile.
