Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says the Gov­ern­ment plans to wean off from the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (De­sal­cott) once the con­tract with them ends in 2028.

He said the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is on a thrust to re­fur­bish and drill new wells to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion and sup­ply to cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Util­is­ing Desla­cott’s ser­vices cost tax­pay­ers over $700 mil­lion per year and the con­tract is card­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2028/2030.

Speak­ing at WASA’s Freeport Well drill site #20 yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Gon­za­les said, “It is un­sus­tain­able to put the tax­pay­ers to bear a bill of $700 mil­lion per year on this when you still have so many peo­ple com­plain­ing about wa­ter. So, I have my doubts about whether or not this De­saclcott arrange­ment or the de­sali­na­tion arrange­ment is serv­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

“My view is that you get your ground­wa­ter, you get your sur­face wa­ter, it is from a fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive, it is more sus­tain­able, it is not as ex­pen­sive and we can save mil­lions of dol­lars from these arrange­ments.”

Cur­rent­ly, ar­eas in cen­tral and south Trinidad get their wa­ter sup­ply from De­sal­cott and the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plan.

But Gon­za­les said they are now look­ing at al­ter­na­tive op­tions.

“What we have de­cid­ed to do is to iden­ti­fy some rich aquifers in the Freeport area to be able to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion and re­duce the re­liance on De­sal­cott as well as the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant,” he said.

“In the first phase, you would see the drilling of three wells, as well as the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of an­oth­er well in Cal­i­for­nia. In the IDB loan pro­gramme, we have al­so iden­ti­fied three more wells to be drilled in the Freeport area, bring­ing a to­tal of six new wells in this area in ad­di­tion to the well in Cal­i­for­nia.

“The Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant de­sign ca­pac­i­ty, I’m ad­vised, is three mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day. Cur­rent­ly, it is pro­duc­ing two mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day, so it’s un­der-pro­duc­ing as well. All of these things con­tribute to the poor wa­ter sup­ply in this com­mu­ni­ty.”

He said un­der the IDB pro­gramme, they will re­ha­bil­i­tate the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant to treat the in­creased ca­pac­i­ty of wa­ter from the ground­wa­ter wells and in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant to five mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day. The ad­di­tion­al wa­ter will be chan­nelled to those ar­eas that are un­served ar­eas get­ting wa­ter once every nine days or once every eight days, he said.

The three wells will cost over $6 mil­lion.