RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

WASA’s act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Kelvin Ro­main, is as­sur­ing that all sys­tems are in place to off­set the wa­ter short­fall, as the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) be­gan its sev­en-day shut­down of the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant to fa­cil­i­tate main­te­nance work.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ro­main said the de­sali­na­tion plant, which sup­plies 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day, went of­fline yes­ter­day and will be un­avail­able un­til No­vem­ber 17.

An es­ti­mat­ed 350,000 cus­tomers in parts of cen­tral and south Trinidad and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate are ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed.

How­ev­er, Ro­main as­sured cit­i­zens that WASA had re­vised sched­ules for the af­fect­ed ar­eas and ex­pand­ed its wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty to man­age sup­ply.

“We have re­vised our sched­ules to the af­fect­ed ar­eas, ex­pand­ed our wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty, and we in­tend to ramp up ac­cord­ing­ly at Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant,” Ro­main re­vealed.

He added, “It is ex­pect­ed that some parts of cen­tral and south Trinidad will ex­pe­ri­ence a dis­rup­tion in sup­ply, and we there­fore en­cour­age cus­tomers af­fect­ed to con­serve us­age and man­age their tank re­serves.

“We trust that De­sal­cott will com­plete their main­te­nance works on or be­fore sched­ule.”

Ro­main said the Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant would al­so in­crease out­put to help cov­er the short­fall.

He al­so apol­o­gised for any in­con­ve­nience caused by the main­te­nance work, not­ing that the au­thor­i­ty is ready to re­spond to re­quests for wa­ter de­liv­ery through its wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice.

De­sal­cott’s main­te­nance works were orig­i­nal­ly planned for Sep­tem­ber but were resched­uled to No­vem­ber to al­low for bet­ter re­cov­ery of WASA’s sup­ply net­works fol­low­ing a harsh dry sea­son.

Since the an­nounce­ment, res­i­dents in south and cen­tral Trinidad have been stock­ing up on bot­tled wa­ter in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the dis­rup­tion.

Aaron Toolsie, a res­i­dent of Di­a­mond Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, said on Sun­day—the day be­fore the shut­down—that wa­ter short­ages were fre­quent in his com­mu­ni­ty, lead­ing him and his neigh­bours to store wa­ter when­ev­er pos­si­ble.

Toolsie claimed the ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply is­sues in his area saw him and oth­er res­i­dents go­ing with­out wa­ter for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods, some­times last­ing up to two weeks. In prepa­ra­tion for the shut­down, he stored wa­ter in a pool, two bar­rels, and three tanks, say­ing he hoped the main­te­nance works would not ex­ceed the sched­uled days. Busi­ness­es in south Trinidad have al­so not­ed a rise in bot­tled wa­ter sales.