JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les:

More water for thousands by December 2024

by

522 days ago
20230921

The Gov­ern­ment is em­bark­ing on an un­prece­dent­ed bil­lion-dol­lar up­grade of the wa­ter sup­ply in­fra­struc­ture at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), which is be­ing fund­ed by a US$315 mil­lion ($2.14 bil­lion) con­di­tion­al cred­it line from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and from the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP).

On its web­site, the IDB states that its wa­ter re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme for T&T will di­rect­ly ben­e­fit an es­ti­mat­ed 1,025,000 res­i­dents (in 310,665 house­holds), plus an ad­di­tion­al 279,500 res­i­dents (in 84,705 house­holds) in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,841 busi­ness, agri­cul­tur­al, and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers and char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tions in dif­fer­ent sup­ply ar­eas will ben­e­fit as well, ac­cord­ing to the IDB.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, gave ex­clu­sive de­tails of the cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture on WASA, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last week, even as around the coun­try peo­ple are stag­ing dai­ly protests at the dis­rup­tion to their lives caused by the lack of pipe-borne wa­ter to their homes.

Gon­za­les said he ex­pects the pro­cure­ment process for the IDB-fund­ed projects to start at the end of Sep­tem­ber, for con­trac­tors to be se­lect­ed for the projects by the end of 2023 and for the projects to be com­plet­ed by the end of 2024.

“So that by Jan­u­ary, at the start of the dry sea­son, work will be start­ing on all of these projects: pipeline re­place­ment work; wa­ter treat­ment plant re­fur­bish­ment as well as two new mod­u­lar plants,” said the Min­is­ter.

The IDB di­vid­ed the US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line to T&T in­to three tranch­es, with the first ap­proved tranche be­ing a US$80 mil­lion ($544 mil­lion) loan to boost the ef­fi­cien­cy, qual­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and re­silience of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

Projects out­lined

Ac­cord­ing to WASA’s En­vi­ron­men­tal and So­cial As­sess­ment stud­ies for the pro­gramme of work, the projects in the first tranche to be un­der­tak­en by WASA and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in­clude:

* The re­fur­bish­ment and up­grade of ex­ist­ing wa­ter treat­ment plants (WTP) at Gua­napo, Navet and North Oropouche, which is ex­pect­ed to im­prove the amount and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of wa­ter sup­plied to an es­ti­mat­ed 477,433 cus­tomers

–The Gua­napo WTP, lo­cat­ed in North East Trinidad, serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,471 cus­tomers in the bor­ough of Ari­ma. The plant cur­rent­ly pro­duces three im­pe­r­i­al mil­lion gal­lons per day (IMGD) of potable wa­ter, with an ad­di­tion­al 2.5 IMGD be­ing planned

–The Navet WTP, serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 271,000 cus­tomers in South Trinidad in ar­eas such as Biche, Plum Mi­tan, Or­toire, Ma­yaro, Rio Claro, Table­land, New Grant, St Julien, Princes Town, Mal­gretoute, Bar­rack­pore, Williamsville, Tabaquite, Bronte/Bor­de Narve, Buen In­ten­to, St Mary’s, Man­a­ham­bre, Cedar Hill, Gas­par­il­lo, Di­a­mond

Vil­lage, Co­coyea and Ste Madeleine.

–The North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, lo­cat­ed in North-East Trinidad, pro­duces ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 IMGD of wa­ter which is sup­plied to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 185,962 cus­tomers in the re­gion from Man­zanil­la to Arou­ca.

* The con­struc­tion of new WTP in Golds­bor­ough To­ba­go and Green Mead­ows in San­ta Cruz.

On com­ple­tion, the Golds­bor­ough WTP will pro­duce 1.67 im­pe­r­i­al mil­lion gal­lons per day (IMGD) dur­ing the wet sea­son and 900,000 IMGD dur­ing the dry sea­son, im­prov­ing the lev­el of ser­vice to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,828 per­sons and al­le­vi­at­ing sup­ply is­sues in the Good­wood, Pem­broke, and Glam­or­gan ar­eas of To­ba­go;

Some 14,270 peo­ple liv­ing in the San­ta Cruz are ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence an im­prove­ment in their wa­ter sup­ply to 24 hours a day, five days per week, when the San­ta Cruz (Green Mead­ows) Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant is com­plet­ed. That fa­cil­i­ty will pro­duce 4.5 IMGD in the wet sea­son and 2.25 IMGD in the dry sea­son.

* New wells are al­so ap­proved for the Pe­nal area – Clarke Road and for the Tuck­er Val­ley area, with as­so­ci­at­ed pipelines.

–The new well pro­posed for the Pe­nal area – Clarke Road #9 Well is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce 636m3/day of raw wa­ter per day.

This in­creased avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter should trans­late to un­der­served ar­eas re­ceiv­ing a potable pipe borne sup­ply of wa­ter more reg­u­lar­ly, the tar­get of a 24-hour sup­ply, two days per week at Clarke Road and a 24 hour sup­ply, four days per week at Tuck­er Val­ley, ac­cord­ing to the WASA doc­u­ments.

The Clarke Road Wells sup­plies potable wa­ter to sev­er­al vil­lages in south Trinidad such as Wil­son Road, Dig­i­ty Trace, Ar­joon Trace, Old Clarke Road and parts of Clarke Road.

“The new well pro­posed for the Tuck­er Val­ley area- Tuck­er Val­ley #34 Well is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce 1000m3/day. The Tuck­er Val­ley WTP sup­plies potable wa­ter to a num­ber of vil­lages in North West Trinidad such as Tuck­er Val­ley, Care­nage and Ch­aguara­mas.

“Of­ten, set­tle­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly those on the ex­trem­i­ties of the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, face chal­lenges in re­ceiv­ing a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter. Ar­eas such as Clarke Road have been placed on tem­po­rary wa­ter sched­ules, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the dry sea­son, where wa­ter is sup­plied on a ro­tat­ing ba­sis, 24/1. The Tuck­er Val­ley Area’s cur­rent lev­el of ser­vice is 24/2,” the WASA doc­u­ments out­lined.

The first tranche of the IDB loan has four com­po­nents:

* US$44.7 mil­lion for ur­gent wa­ter sup­ply sta­bil­i­sa­tion and im­prove­ment;

* US$2.2 mil­lion for sup­port for wa­ter sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion by de­vel­op­ing ca­pac­i­ty and pro­vid­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and WASA;

* US$30.3 mil­lion for ur­gent net­work op­ti­mi­sa­tion to en­hance net­work per­for­mance and re­duce non-rev­enue wa­ter. Un­der this com­po­nent, WASA will en­ter in­to a co-man­age­ment, per­for­mance-based con­tract with a con­sult­ing firm that will be look­ing at non-rev­enue wa­ter (leak­age and pil­fer­age); and

* US$2.8 mil­lion to fund the op­er­a­tion of the project ex­e­cu­tion units at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and at WASA.

Those project ex­e­cu­tion units were a con­di­tion prece­dent of the IDB lend­ing T&T mon­ey for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of WASA giv­en the “very, very bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence” the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion had with T&T in the late 1990s un­der the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, said Gon­za­les.

“Once the projects in the first tranche are com­plet­ed, we have al­ready sub­mit­ted our case for the sec­ond tranche, which would be US$150 mil­lion,” said the Min­is­ter.

The ren­o­va­tion of the three wa­ter treat­ment plants, the con­struc­tion of two new plants and the drilling of new wells means that


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored