The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is falling short by 30 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter a day as the coun­try con­tin­ues to face a harsh dry sea­son.

Con­fir­ma­tion came yes­ter­day from WASA chair­man Rom­ney Thomas, as thou­sands of res­i­dents through­out the coun­try have been com­plain­ing about be­ing with­out a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply for weeks.

Thomas said in the wet sea­son WASA pro­duces and dis­trib­utes 240 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly.

“Right now we are pro­duc­ing 210 mil­lion gal­lons per day. We are falling short of 30 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly in the dry sea­son be­cause we have had to cut back on pro­duc­tion. That is part of the prob­lem,” Thomas said.

Last De­cem­ber, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices Di­vi­sion warned cit­i­zens of a hot and harsh dry sea­son this year with be­low av­er­age rain­fall lead­ing to a much dri­er than usu­al con­di­tions.

In a bid to ad­dress the wa­ter short­fall, Thomas said WASA would un­der­take a num­ber of mea­sures ear­ly next month to in­crease its wa­ter sup­ply across the board de­spite the coun­try’s se­vere drought.

From May 1, WASA will im­ple­ment a new wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule and in­crease its pipe leak re­pair crew. He ad­mit­ted that the bone of con­tention had to do with WASA’s wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule which went in­to ef­fect on March 1 to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of the dry sea­son. Some cit­i­zens had com­plained that WASA was dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter out­side of its stip­u­lat­ed sched­ule - most times late at nights to com­mu­ni­ties, with low wa­ter pres­sure and wa­ter poor in qual­i­ty.

“We are try­ing to deal with the prob­lems as they arise. We have to make ad­just­ments to the wa­ter sched­ules be­cause we re­alise in some ar­eas we need to cut back a lit­tle bit,” Thomas said.

Thomas al­so said WASA has to be eq­ui­table in dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter to the pub­lic.

“So we have al­so added some per­son­nel to our call cen­tre to deal with the added in­flux of calls. We are work­ing around the clock to en­sure that the de­mand for wa­ter is sat­is­fied and to ad­dress some of the con­cerns of the pub­lic. We would con­tin­ue our ef­forts notwith­stand­ing all that is be­ing said.”

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that the dry sea­son has been se­vere­ly af­fect­ing WASA’s over­all wa­ter sup­ply. “We had prob­lems with the ex­trem­i­ties of the sys­tem. When it is com­ing to the end of the sys­tem, the pres­sures kind of drop off, so peo­ple at the end of the sys­tem, they might ex­pe­ri­ence some chal­lenges.”

Two dis­tricts that have re­cent­ly been com­plain­ing about the lack of wa­ter in their taps are Pe­nal/Debe and Ma­yaro. But the Guardian Me­dia news­room has al­so been re­ceiv­ing calls from com­mu­ni­ties which are not on these ex­trem­i­ties like Cou­va, Ch­agua­nas, Diego Mar­tin and even Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte on Tues­day promised that WASA would try to look at emer­gency sup­ply for com­mu­ni­ties ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

But as WASA seeks to make up the deficit, Thomas said next month they ex­pect “be­low nor­mal rain­fall.”

“We are go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence some dry sea­son con­di­tions for a lit­tle while longer but we are work­ing as best as we can to en­sure there is an ad­e­quate sup­ply to meet the na­tion’s de­mand.”

He re­vealed that wa­ter lev­els at the Navet Dam were sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low its thresh­old.

“It is not crit­i­cal but it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low the long-term av­er­ages around this time of year.”

Thomas said in keep­ing with its Wa­ter Agency guide­lines, WASA has been try­ing to in­crease pro­duc­tion at its reser­voirs.

Hav­ing re­paired 1,400 pipe leaks in the last five months, he said WASA will al­so work around the clock in the com­ing days to fix its 1,100 out­stand­ing pipe leaks.

Asked if the De­sali­na­tion Plant in Point Lisas has been de­liv­er­ing its quo­ta, Thomas said yes.

“As a mat­ter of fact, the plant has been ex­ceed­ing its con­trac­tu­al re­quire­ments of 40 mil­lion gal­lons per day to meet the wa­ter de­mand,” he said.

Thomas ad­mit­ted that in the last few weeks WASA has been bom­bard­ed with calls by cit­i­zens who did not have wa­ter.

“Right now be­cause of the con­di­tions we are get­ting more than the nor­mal lev­el of calls. Any time I hear peo­ple not re­ceiv­ing wa­ter it is a con­cern for me. That is a ma­jor con­cern for me. I do get a lot of com­plaints about lack of wa­ter. They might talk about the low wa­ter pres­sure and some­times they do com­plain about the wa­ter qual­i­ty.”

50% of sup­ply lost via leaks

WASA’s records in­di­cate that the coun­ty’s de­mand for wa­ter typ­i­cal­ly in­creas­es by 16 mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons dur­ing the dry sea­son. Com­pound­ing the is­sue, WASA es­ti­mates that al­most 50 per cent of the na­tion’s wa­ter sup­ply is lost through sur­face and sub-sur­face leaks from age­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

While 59 per cent of the coun­try’s wa­ter is sup­plied by sur­face wa­ter sources such as reser­voirs and rivers which are fed by rain­fall and rivers, they are es­pe­cial­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to evap­o­ra­tion dur­ing the dry sea­son.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, wa­ter lost by evap­o­ra­tion amounts to 190 mil­lion gal­lons for the en­tire dry sea­son or 1.3 mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons per day, which is enough to meet the needs of 593,000 house­holds.

Adding to this, cit­i­zens use be­tween 83 gal­lons to 95 gal­lons of wa­ter a day—twice as much as the 44 gal­lons ref­er­enced by the Unit­ed Na­tions as the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard.