The Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is re­port­ing that some 3.4 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter were dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents in the re­gion dur­ing the 2022 Dry Sea­son, be­tween Jan­u­ary and May this year.

And the Cor­po­ra­tion says it has used up its en­tire bud­get al­lo­ca­tion on the wa­ter truck­ing ex­er­cise, a ser­vice it of­fers an­nu­al­ly.

“In the 79-day pe­ri­od, com­menc­ing on 29 Jan­u­ary 2022, the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion dis­trib­uted 3.2444 mil­lion gal­lons of drink­ing wa­ter to non-WASA con­nect­ed res­i­dents. The pro­gramme came to an end on Wednes­day 25 May 2022,” the Cor­po­ra­tion says in a re­lease.

“The PDRC has now ex­haust­ed its $650,000 bud­get­ed al­lo­ca­tion for the an­nu­al ser­vice of­fered dur­ing the dry sea­son,” it added.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cor­po­ra­tion’s state­ment, dur­ing the pe­ri­od, 12 trucks each car­ry­ing 1200 gal­lons of wa­ter would have left the fill­ing bay at the Debe hy­drant on a dai­ly ba­sis, to ser­vice res­i­dents liv­ing in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in the re­gion. In ad­di­tion, each truck made three trips per day, de­liv­er­ing a min­i­mum of 400 gal­lons per fam­i­ly, in a five-to-sev­en-day cy­cle.

The PDRC said res­i­dents face the chal­lenge of be­ing able to cap­ture and store their rain wa­ter in or­der to meet their dai­ly re­quire­ments, be­cause of WASA’s fail­ure to pro­vide a prop­er ser­vice.

"Our re­gion is one of great con­tra­dic­tion— too much wa­ter and floods in the rainy sea­son and a bone-dry sup­ply in the dry," ob­served one res­i­dent, Den­nis Gopee, who com­mend­ed the PDRC for its wa­ter truck­ing ser­vice.

Mr Gopee be­lieves WASA should dig more wells and es­tab­lish wa­ter catch­ment ar­eas and de­ten­tion ponds.

He al­so called on the au­thor­i­ties to se­ri­ous­ly ex­plore the pro­pos­al for a dam at Hag­gardd Trace in the South­ern Waster­shed.