The Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant will be shut­down be­tween Mon­day 18 to Sat­ur­day 24 Au­gust 2025, to fa­cil­i­tate main­te­nance works.

In a state­ment, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­vealed that it had re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion from the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) of its planned an­nu­al shut­down.

Ac­cord­ing to the WASA re­lease:

“This is in keep­ing with the an­nounce­ment made last month that fol­low­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive dis­cus­sions with WASA and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, De­sal­cott agreed to ad­just its main­te­nance to take place in Au­gust, as op­posed to vary­ing times in ei­ther the month of Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber or No­vem­ber, as has oc­curred in pre­vi­ous years.”

The Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant—owned and op­er­at­ed by De­sal­cott—pro­vides 40 mil­lion gal­lons dai­ly to WASA, which is used to sup­ply the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, as well as aug­ment the sup­ply to ar­eas in Cen­tral and South Trinidad.

Some of the af­fect­ed ar­eas will in­clude:

Ca­roni, St. He­le­na, Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas, Cunu­pia, Cara­pichaima, Cou­va, Clax­ton Bay, Mara­bel­la, Gas­par­il­lo, San Fer­nan­do, Co­coyea, Union Hall, La Ro­maine, Wood­land, Palmiste, Philip­pine, Ram­bert Vil­lage, South Oropouche, Fyz­abad, Av­o­cat, Siparia, Pe­nal, San Fran­cique, Rousil­lac, Aripero and La Brea.

WASA says to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of this sup­ply short­fall on op­er­a­tions, it will im­ple­ment sev­er­al mea­sures dur­ing the shut­down pe­ri­od:

1. Re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of sup­ply from the Ca­roni and Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants

2. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of tem­po­rary sup­ply sched­ules, which will be pub­lished in WASA’s so­cial me­dia pages (Face­Book, In­sta­gram, What­sApp Chan­nel and X)

3. En­sure ca­pac­i­ty stor­age at crit­i­cal ser­vice reser­voirs pri­or to the shut­down

4. In­creased wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty

5. Spe­cial em­pha­sis and arrange­ments to sup­ply health in­sti­tu­tions, homes for the aged and oth­er spe­cial needs or­gan­i­sa­tions

WASA is ad­vis­ing cus­tomers to main­tain and/or es­tab­lish a sys­tem of stor­age over the pe­ri­od of the shut­down and to al­so man­age their wa­ter use ef­fi­cient­ly, by re­duc­ing con­sump­tion through the ob­ser­va­tion of wa­ter con­ser­va­tion prac­tices.

It says a lim­it­ed truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply will be avail­able up­on re­quest, with pri­or­i­ty be­ing giv­en to health care and spe­cial needs in­sti­tu­tions. This can be re­quest­ed through the Cus­tomer Por­tal avail­able on the Au­thor­i­ty’s web­site at www.wasa.gov.tt.

Al­ter­na­tive­ly, those cus­tomers re­quir­ing a truck borne sup­ply, di­rect as­sis­tance or fur­ther in­for­ma­tion can con­tact WASA’s Cus­tomer Call Cen­tre toll free at 800-4420 and 800-4426.