SAMP­SON NAN­TION

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has de­nied claims of a planned shut­down at the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) this week­end, af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised the com­pa­ny on Thurs­day.

WASA said the claims were com­plete­ly false and that De­sal­cott was, in fact, in­creas­ing the sup­ply of wa­ter for the hol­i­day week­end.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas on Thurs­day night when she spoke on the is­sue.

“And may I say I find it very in­sen­si­tive for De­sal­cott, in the mid­dle of the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions, to go down on a lock­down and main­te­nance? You have 365 days, 52 weeks of the year, and you choose Di­vali week to lock down and shut off the wa­ter,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not say where she got the in­for­ma­tion about the pos­si­ble shut­down.

Re­spond­ing in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, WASA said the op­po­site is true, adding that over the week­end, from yes­ter­day to to­mor­row (No­vem­ber 12), De­sal­cott will be in­creas­ing its pro­duc­tion from the con­tract­ed 40 mil­lion gal­lons per day (mgd) to 42 mgd.

The state­ment said this fol­lowed a di­rec­tive from Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les for WASA to re­quest an in­crease in pro­duc­tion from De­sal­cott to meet the an­tic­i­pat­ed ad­di­tion­al de­mand.

“Fur­ther, on Wednes­day, No­vem­ber 8, 2023, the au­thor­i­ty com­mis­sioned the new Freeport Wells #19 and 20, along with Cal­i­for­nia Well #3, which was con­vert­ed from a non-pro­duc­ing to a pro­duc­ing wa­ter source. This has boost­ed wa­ter pro­duc­tion at the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant by one mil­lion gal­lons per day (MGD), from 2.5 to 3.5 MGD,” the WASA state­ment said.

It said these im­prove­ments have re­sult­ed in “a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in sup­ply to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 per­sons in Freeport and en­vi­rons, who can now ex­pect to re­ceive a wa­ter sup­ply that ranges from 24/7 to 24/4, in­stead of the one in nine days, that some cus­tomers re­ceived pre­vi­ous­ly”.

WASA as­sured cus­tomers that ef­forts were be­ing made to pro­vide an ad­e­quate sup­ply to meet the needs of cit­i­zens as they pre­pare for the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions.

WASA last an­nounced an of­fi­cial shut­down of the De­sal­cott fa­cil­i­ty for main­te­nance for a nine-day pe­ri­od last month from Mon­day Oc­to­ber 16 to Tues­day Oc­to­ber 24.
How­ev­er, it com­plet­ed the work ahead of sched­ule, on Oc­to­ber 22.

De­sal­cott pro­vides 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly to WASA, which sup­plies the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and boosts the sup­ply to ar­eas in Cen­tral and South West Trinidad.