Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With the sev­en-day shut­down of the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant com­menc­ing to­day, sev­er­al af­fect­ed res­i­dents in south Trinidad spent the week­end fill­ing up their wa­ter con­tain­ers and en­sur­ing that they have suf­fi­cient drink­ing wa­ter.

This fol­lows last Thurs­day’s an­nounce­ment dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence by the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) that the plant would be shut down from to­day un­til No­vem­ber 17 to fa­cil­i­tate main­te­nance work.

Some 350,000 cus­tomers may be af­fect­ed as the plant sup­plies 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 west Trinidad.

While WASA as­sured that it would be boost­ing its wa­ter truck­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion, sev­er­al res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that they were not tak­ing any chances. They com­plained that they had to wait days af­ter re­quest­ing wa­ter from WASA and of­ten­times would buy truck-borne wa­ter.

Aaron Toolsie, of Di­a­mond Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, said they have suf­fi­cient stor­age con­tain­ers be­cause they of­ten ex­pe­ri­ence wa­ter prob­lems in the com­mu­ni­ty.

In fact, this has be­come a way of life for res­i­dents in these ar­eas who have been forced to dig deep­er in­to their pock­ets to pur­chase wa­ter when they do not re­ceive a sup­ply.

“Some­times we don’t get wa­ter for sev­en days, eight days, up to al­most two weeks. We fill up what we have—a pool, two bar­rels, three tanks—prepar­ing for the wa­ter out­age,” Toolsie said.

He is hop­ing that the shut­down does not ex­tend be­yond the sev­en days.

Mean­while, Ra­heim Bing­ham, man­ag­er of Di­a­mond Liquor Mart and Su­per­mar­ket, which is in Toolsie’s neigh­bour­hood, said there has been a 20 to 30 per cent in­crease in bot­tled wa­ter sales since the shut­down was an­nounced.

Not­ing that they had de­creased their wa­ter prices some time ago, he said that this year the com­mu­ni­ty has had a lot of wa­ter short­ages.

“Even though there is go­ing to be a lock­down on wa­ter, year-round it seems like it’s a (wa­ter) lock­down in the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

He added that peo­ple would use what “lit­tle wa­ter they have” to do dai­ly chores and pur­chase wa­ter to drink.

There was al­so an in­crease in bot­tled wa­ter sales at Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket in South Haven, Debe. Em­ploy­ee Adri­an Ram­rat­tan said wa­ter has been sell­ing steadi­ly, and they were con­stant­ly re­stock­ing the shelves.

He ex­pects that bot­tled wa­ter sales will in­crease dur­ing the sev­en-day shut­down. While at the gro­cery, a cus­tomer bought four cas­es of wa­ter, which he said was in prepa­ra­tion for the shut­down.