Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Gov­ern­ment has in­creased the pro­duc­tion of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter as it pre­pares for the im­pact of El Niño and wors­en­ing drought con­di­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The move comes days af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was prepar­ing to im­pose wa­ter re­stric­tions as part of con­ser­va­tion mea­sures.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a vis­it by Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau to the Ex­change Shiv Mandir in Cou­va yes­ter­day, Padarath said more de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter was al­ready be­ing in­ject­ed in­to the na­tion­al grid, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter sup­ply chal­lenges.

“Yes, so that is some­thing that we’ve been speak­ing ac­tive­ly to De­sal­cott on. We have al­ready ramped up pro­duc­tion with De­sal­cott to in­ject and in­fuse more wa­ter on­to the grid,” he said.

Padarath said the in­creased pro­duc­tion would par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit com­mu­ni­ties ex­pect­ed to be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by El Niño.

He al­so dis­closed that the Gov­ern­ment was ex­plor­ing a short- to medi­um-term so­lu­tion for To­ba­go, where drought-like con­di­tions have con­tin­ued to af­fect wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty.

“We are work­ing to­geth­er with en­ti­ties to put to­geth­er a pack­ag­ing fa­cil­i­ty, which is a small­er type of de­sali­na­tion plant that is mo­bile,” Padarath said.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the mo­bile fa­cil­i­ty could be op­er­a­tional with­in weeks and would al­low more de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter to be sup­plied to the na­tion­al grid.

“It can be op­er­a­tional with­in weeks, and those are some of the things that we will be work­ing to­wards in terms of putting more de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter on­to the grid, in the short term, in­to the medi­um term, to bring about more re­lief to cit­i­zens,” he said.