The Gov­ern­ment has re­cent­ly ap­proved a US$315 mil­lion con­di­tion­al cred­it line for in­vest­ment projects in the wa­ter and waste­water sec­tor.

The an­nounce­ment came from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les at the com­mis­sion­ing of WASA’s $650 mil­lion San Fer­nan­do Waste­water Treat­ment Plant yes­ter­day.

He ex­plained that the first com­po­nent of the loan in the sum $US80 mil­lion, which will be re­ceived at the end of the month, will be used to sup­port the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA and to un­der­take crit­i­cal in­vest­ment projects to sta­bilise and im­prove the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion in T&T.

Ex­plain­ing that the US$80 mil­lion will be di­vid­ed in­to three ar­eas, he said US$44 mil­lion will fi­nance a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme to sta­bilise and im­prove wa­ter ser­vices.

“We are go­ing to pur­chase six to eight mod­u­lar wa­ter plants to be de­ployed in strate­gic ar­eas across T&T, in­clud­ing two in San­gre Grande, bring­ing to the grid over 10 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter for the peo­ple of San­gre Grande.”

He said they can be as­sured of a 24-hour wa­ter sup­ply.

The min­is­ter said the sec­ond com­po­nent of the loan fa­cil­i­ty will fo­cus on the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA and sup­port for in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty in the sum of US$2.74 mil­lion.

Gon­za­les added that US$31 mil­lion will be in­vest­ed in the third com­po­nent which in­volves net­work op­ti­mi­sa­tion and re­duce non-rev­enue wa­ter. He said they al­so in­tend to au­to­mate all of WASA’s wa­ter pro­duc­tion, trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture so they could un­der­stand re­al-time and know when dis­rup­tions oc­cur to re­duce neg­a­tive im­pact on cus­tomers.

“Too of­ten WASA has op­er­at­ed in the dark. Too of­ten we have to lis­ten and hear com­plaints on so­cial me­dia when we are in­formed of wa­ter dis­rup­tions all across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Too of­ten we are not aware of the amount of wa­ter be­ing pro­duced in some of our plants. We don’t know when our wa­ter wells go down,” the min­is­ter said.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns over job loss­es, he said what he sees are op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple who are trained in tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms and new op­por­tu­ni­ties for WASA per­son­nel to be re-tooled and re-skilled.

Not­ing that the waste­water treat­ment plants in San Fer­nan­do, Trinci­ty and Mal­abar were fund­ed through IDB loans, Gon­za­les boast­ed that T&T has the largest waste­water cov­er­age in the Caribbean of 42 per cent.

He added that the waste­water presents sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T.

“This high­ly treat­ed waste­water can now be utilised to sup­port the agri sec­tor, the com­mer­cial sec­tor, the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor and so many op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause when you look like a mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty like this in San Fer­nan­do you will not be able to dis­tin­guish be­tween waste­water and wa­ter from the bot­tle that we are drink­ing from,” the min­is­ter said.

Mean­while, IDB rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ca­ri­na Cock­burn said the San Fer­nan­do plant has a ca­pac­i­ty to treat 45 mil­lion litres of waste­water per day and will ben­e­fit 111,600 peo­ple.

She not­ed, “Waste­water that is no longer be­ing dis­charged in­to the Cipero Riv­er and by ex­ten­sion in­to the Gulf of Paria. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the risk of harm­ful ex­po­sure to un­treat­ed sewage and the emis­sion of nox­ious gas­es such as hy­dro­gen sul­fide has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced. It has been well doc­u­ment­ed that these gas­es can have ad­verse health ef­fects on hu­mans such as res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases and in­testi­nal dis­eases for bathers or those who in­gest un­treat­ed wa­ter from rivers and streams.”

Cock­burn added that waste­water treat­ment, there­fore, is crit­i­cal for the pro­tec­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment and the health of both hu­mans and an­i­mals.