Cit­i­zens need to do their part to con­serve wa­ter dur­ing the dry sea­son as every drop counts. That’s the ad­vice from Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials for what is ex­pect­ed to be a harsh sea­son.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte ad­mit­ted there are sev­er­al short­com­ings on the part of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) but said that does not ab­solve cit­i­zens from do­ing their part to con­serve wa­ter.

“Over the next few months, every one of us will have to be our broth­er’s keep­er in re­la­tion to how we mon­i­tor, man­age and use our wa­ter re­sources,” he said.

How­ev­er, Le Hunte said cit­i­zens should not be wor­ried.

“We have been here be­fore, we’ve done this be­fore with WASA in this coun­try and we have learn—WASA has learnt in pre­vi­ous times. They have a plan in place to deal with it,” he said.

Dur­ing this dry sea­son, Trinidad is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 29 mm or 10 per cent less rain­fall than in pre­vi­ous years, while­To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence 56 mm or 24 per cent less rain­fall.

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, Le Hunte said, 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.

“The fact that each of us us­es dou­ble the rec­om­mend­ed amount of wa­ter means that if we were to ac­tu­al­ly keep to the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, we could sup­ply wa­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go twice over,” he said.

Le Hunte said in prepa­ra­tion for the sea­son, WASA is re­pair­ing 28 wells hich is ex­pect­ed to add 5 mil­lion gal­lons to the ex­ist­ing sys­tem. It is al­so putting mea­sures in place to re­ha­bil­i­tate an­oth­er ten wells, which would add a fur­ther 1.5 mil­lion gal­lons. WASA is drilling two ad­di­tion­al wells which they an­tic­i­pate will con­tribute 0.5 mil­lion gal­lons a day. One is be­ing dug in Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go and the oth­er in Arou­ca. They are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in April.

Le Hunte al­so said De­sal­cott has been re-tool­ing and up­grad­ing its plant to main­tain pro­duc­tion re­li­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing the dry sea­son. WASA has al­so un­der­tak­en a re­pair pro­gramme to fix some 2,000 leaks in their aged in­fra­struc­ture, the ma­jor­i­ty of which are un­der­ground. They will al­so be en­gag­ing in a pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign.