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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Trincity Wastewater Plant to serve 17,000

by

Jesse Ramdeo
1058 days ago
20220330
Minister of Housing & Urban Development Camille Robinson-Regis, second from left, chats with Minister of Planning and Development Pennelope Beckles-Robinson as Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde, left, Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales and Inter American Development Bank IDB Country Representative Carina Natiche Cockburn, right, look on during the recommissioning ceremony of the Trincity Wastewater Treatment Plant on Tuesday.

Minister of Housing & Urban Development Camille Robinson-Regis, second from left, chats with Minister of Planning and Development Pennelope Beckles-Robinson as Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde, left, Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales and Inter American Development Bank IDB Country Representative Carina Natiche Cockburn, right, look on during the recommissioning ceremony of the Trincity Wastewater Treatment Plant on Tuesday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Over 17,000 peo­ple across sev­en com­mu­ni­ties in east Trinidad are in line to ben­e­fit from the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Trinci­ty Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

At a recom­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Tues­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said that the plant, lo­cat­ed off the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, in­clud­ed new treat­ment sys­tems con­sist­ing of screen­ing, grit re­moval, bi­o­log­i­cal treat­ment and sec­ondary clar­i­fi­ca­tion among oth­er pu­rifi­ca­tion mea­sures.

Gon­za­les said the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will be ex­pect­ed to aug­ment its dis­tri­b­u­tion sup­ply by tap­ping in­to the treat­ed waste­water the plant pro­duces.

“It has to be fur­ther treat­ed but not much again be­cause you would have seen the high qual­i­ty, so there is one more process to utilise to bring the wa­ter up to world health stan­dards and the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists for it to be used in the do­mes­tic grid,” Gon­za­les said.

Be­fore the idea is flushed away en­tire­ly, it was one the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter said could pos­si­bly be a boost to the fi­nances of the weak­ened state com­pa­ny.

“It is a mat­ter of ed­u­cat­ing the pop­u­la­tion be­cause the whole idea of con­sum­ing treat­ed waste­water is some­thing you have to in­cre­men­tal­ly put in­to the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Gon­za­les not­ed that wa­ter re-use will be an es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We can now use this wa­ter to give sup­port to our farm­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause the farm­ers can now have ac­cess to it once the prop­er things are done. They can now have ac­cess to wa­ter to ir­ri­gate their crops through­out the en­tire year, we can now use the wa­ter to sup­port our in­dus­tries, we can al­so use it to recharge our aquifers so it’s a very im­pres­sive pro­gramme.”

The ex­pand­ed ca­pac­i­ty of the new plant will al­low for 2,385 new waste­water cus­tomers to be reg­u­larised.

It was al­so re­port­ed that COVID-19 had hin­dered works on the treat­ment plant, which took two years to com­plete at a cost of $60 mil­lion as a re­sult.

The funds for the project were ob­tained through a loan from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank sev­en years ago. How­ev­er, it was al­most jeop­ar­dised af­ter the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment al­leged­ly breached the terms and con­di­tions of the loan.

Ac­cord­ing to Hous­ing and Ur­ban and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, swift ac­tion was need­ed to se­cure the loan.

“When we came in­to of­fice, we re­struc­tured the loan so that we can utilise the mon­ey or else the mon­ey would have been sent back,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.


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