Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed

@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to im­pose wa­ter re­stric­tions as Trinidad and To­ba­go braces for a pro­longed dry spell, with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath con­firm­ing that con­ser­va­tion mea­sures could be an­nounced with­in days.

Asked whether re­stric­tions such as a hosepipe ban were un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, Padarath replied: “Yes, we are ac­tive­ly look­ing at that... So yes, you can ex­pect in the short term that cer­tain an­nounce­ments will be made in this re­gard.”

Padarath was speak­ing at a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, where the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) al­so con­firmed that El Niño con­di­tions are now es­tab­lished and are ex­pect­ed to strength­en over the next sev­er­al months, bring­ing be­low-av­er­age rain­fall, high­er tem­per­a­tures and longer dry spells that could ex­tend in­to next year.

TTMS di­rec­tor Sha­keer Baig said, “This could re­sult in low­er in­flows in­to our reser­voirs, which in turn may af­fect the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter for do­mes­tic, agri­cul­tur­al, in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial use.”

The fore­cast comes as WASA ac­knowl­edges that the coun­try’s wa­ter re­serves have not ful­ly re­cov­ered de­spite re­cent rain­fall.

“Re­cent rain­fall has al­lowed our reser­voirs to re­cov­er par­tial­ly. While this re­cov­ery is en­cour­ag­ing, our reser­voirs re­main be­low full ca­pac­i­ty,” act­ing CEO Dain Ma­haraj said.

With the threat of wa­ter short­ages loom­ing, the Gov­ern­ment says it has al­ready be­gun ex­pand­ing stor­age ca­pac­i­ty across the coun­try.

Sev­en new tank farms have been com­mis­sioned and are now op­er­a­tional, while an­oth­er nine are un­der con­struc­tion: three each in Moru­ga/Table­land, Na­pari­ma and Ma­yaro, and Cu­mu­to. The ad­di­tion­al stor­age fa­cil­i­ties form part of a broad­er ef­fort to strength­en wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty in com­mu­ni­ties that have his­tor­i­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced sup­ply dis­rup­tions dur­ing pro­longed dry pe­ri­ods.

WASA says the in­fra­struc­ture pro­gramme ex­tends be­yond stor­age. Ma­haraj re­vealed that up­grades at the Hills­bor­ough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant are ex­pect­ed to re­cov­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly five mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter each day that pre­vi­ous­ly flowed back in­to rivers dur­ing the treat­ment process, while ground­wa­ter de­vel­op­ment, reser­voir im­prove­ments and leak re­duc­tion projects are al­so be­ing ac­cel­er­at­ed.

Aside from wa­ter con­ser­va­tion, the Gov­ern­ment is al­so prepar­ing for the broad­er ef­fects of high­er tem­per­a­tures. Padarath said min­istries are re­view­ing schools, hos­pi­tals and oth­er crit­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties ahead of the Sep­tem­ber school term, with con­tin­gency plans be­ing de­vel­oped to pro­tect stu­dents, pa­tients and front­line ser­vices.