Trinidad and To­ba­go is pro­gress­ing through the third month of the 2023 dry sea­son with­out the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) hav­ing to im­ple­ment a wa­ter re­stric­tion sched­ule—some­thing that had be­come com­mon­place for this dry pe­ri­od in years past.

This was the word from Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day, as he not­ed that wa­ter ra­tioning has so far been un­nec­es­sary this year.

Speak­ing at the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence on Wa­ter Loss yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said the de­ci­sion to deal with non-rev­enue wa­ter, or wa­ter lost due to leaks or unau­tho­rised con­nec­tions had max­imised wa­ter flow for cit­i­zens.

“We are able to man­age our reser­voirs, the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, the Hills­bor­ough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, North Oropouche, Hol­lis—those leaks and reser­voirs are be­ing man­aged so well that to this point, we have not is­sued a dry sea­son sched­ule,” Gon­za­les said.

He al­so ex­plained that last year, WASA un­der­took a ma­jor project to de­silt the Hills­bor­ough Dam in To­ba­go, which was com­plet­ed by the end of 2022. He said this de­silt­ing ex­er­cise had in­creased the dam’s ca­pac­i­ty be­yond the 1,020,000 cu­bic me­tre ca­pac­i­ty, or 270 mil­lion US gal­lons.

“The peo­ple of To­ba­go are in a very good place,” said Gon­za­les.

How­ev­er, he warned that some parts of the coun­try could be placed un­der a wa­ter re­stric­tion sched­ule if the cur­rent lev­el of dry­ness con­tin­ues over the next three weeks.

He ex­plained, “Cus­tomers of the Hol­lis sys­tem might be placed on a sched­ule be­cause the in­for­ma­tion we’re re­ceiv­ing is that the dam is start­ing to fall in terms of its lev­els.”

The Min­is­ter al­so said due to three to four ground­wa­ter wells drilled in the Aripo area last year, the Hol­lis dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work has an ex­tra “600,000 or 700,000 gal­lons” of wa­ter, sup­ple­ment­ing the cur­rent fall in wa­ter lev­els at the Hol­lis dam.

In ad­di­tion, he said WASA had in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in ground­wa­ter sources, mean­ing wells drilled in­to rock for­ma­tions that hold wa­ter be­low the ground. These sources have added 700,000 to 800,000 gal­lons to the wa­ter sup­ply.

Dur­ing the dry sea­son, wa­ter re­stric­tions on hoses and pres­sure wash­ers are some­times im­ple­ment­ed, but not this year. Still, Gon­za­les asked the pub­lic to do the right thing. He said al­though T&T has wa­ter, “you should not con­tin­ue wa­ter­ing your lawn, wash­ing down your yard and pow­er wash­ing and all this kind of thing. Do the re­spon­si­ble thing.”

He con­tin­ued, “By do­ing that, we will have more wa­ter avail­able to be re­dis­trib­uted to un­served and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, and we will not be able or may not have to im­pose a wa­ter re­stric­tion sched­ule on our cus­tomers.”