Op­er­a­tors at hard­ware stores along the East/West Cor­ri­dor say they have seen a slight in­crease in the de­mand for wa­ter tanks as cit­i­zens brace for a harsh dry sea­son.

Busi­ness own­ers said they have seen a trend of home­own­ers pur­chas­ing tanks fol­low­ing the ini­tial an­nounce­ment of a harsh dry sea­son last No­vem­ber.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte said the Met Ser­vice was ex­pect­ing 29 mm or ten per cent less rain­fall this year, while To­ba­go was ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence 56 mm or 24 per cent less rain­fall than pre­vi­ous years.

Even as he de­scribed the fig­ures as sober­ing, the Min­is­ter said it was a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment con­sid­er­ing as 59 per cent of our wa­ter sup­ply came from sur­face wa­ter sources like reser­voirs and rivers which are fed by rain­fall.

While sur­face wa­ter sup­plies were said to be at 100 per cent in De­cem­ber, Le Hunte said it had de­clined to 95 per cent in Jan­u­ary —which was at­trib­uted to evap­o­ra­tion.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) es­ti­mates that wa­ter lost by evap­o­ra­tion amounts to 190 mil­lion gal­lons for the en­tire dry sea­son, which equates to 1.3 mil­lion gal­lons per day.

Le Hunte said that amount of wa­ter lost to a nat­ur­al process could meet the dai­ly needs of 593,000 house­holds.

WASA’s records in­di­cate the de­mand for wa­ter has al­so in­creased by 16 mil­lion gal­lons dur­ing the dry sea­son—an in­crease of 11 per cent over the usu­al de­mand.

Le Hunte said the Min­istry had been work­ing to de­vel­op a plan of ac­tion for the com­ing months. He said WASA was cur­rent­ly re­pair­ing 28 wells—which is ex­pect­ed to bring in five mil­lion gal­lons in­to the sys­tem.

The av­er­age per­son us­es 83 gal­lons of wa­ter per day in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard put for­ward by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion sug­gests an av­er­age use of 44 gal­lons per day, al­most half of what T&T na­tion­als use.

At William H Scott Home and Hard­ware, Port-of-Spain, of­fi­cials re­port­ed no in­crease in the de­mand for wa­ter tanks but said they had ad­e­quate stock should the pub­lic re­quire it.

At Chai Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, East­ern Main Road, Ari­ma, of­fi­cials con­firmed an in­creased de­mand for 1,000-gal­lon wa­ter tanks by home­own­ers and pri­vate busi­ness­es which are be­ing sold for an av­er­age of $2,000 each.

Store own­ers said many peo­ple were anx­ious about the dire pre­dic­tions and were mov­ing to boost their sup­ply re­serves.

“It seems the pub­lic is pay­ing at­ten­tion and some per­sons are tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to im­prove their sit­u­a­tions,” a store own­er said.

Arou­ca res­i­dent Car­men Dook­ie, 66, who al­ready has two wa­ter tanks (a 400-gal­lon and a 1,000 gal­lon) in­stalled at her home, pur­chased two ad­di­tion­al 800-gal­lon wa­ter tanks to en­sure she is not with­out a sup­ply dur­ing the dry sea­son.

“It cost me around $1,600 for the two tanks and labour was an­oth­er $2,500 as I had to buy the ma­te­r­i­al to build the stands and pay the plumber. It was a lit­tle pricey for me but I didn’t mind be­cause I know it is for my fam­i­ly’s com­fort.”

Kam­lall’s Hard­ware, San Juan, al­so re­port­ed an in­creased de­mand for 1,000-gal­lon wa­ter tanks.

One work­er said they had been warned prices could sky-rock­et in the com­ing weeks.

At As­gar Ali’s Hard­ware and Trans­port, En­ter­prise, one man said peo­ple were tak­ing the warn­ing se­ri­ous­ly as many were en­quir­ing about the avail­abil­i­ty of tanks and prices while some ac­tu­al­ly placed or­ders.

At this lo­ca­tion, the 1,000 gal­lon tank which was be­ing favoured by the pub­lic is re­tail­ing for $2,100.

At ACME Gen­er­al Sup­plies & Dri­ve-In Hard­ware Ltd, Tu­na­puna, store of­fi­cials said they had not ob­served an in­crease in the de­mand for tanks as they be­lieved the pub­lic was not se­ri­ous about heed­ing the warn­ings as to what was to be ex­pect­ed dur­ing this year’s dry sea­son.