The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has ne­go­ti­at­ed a new sched­ule for the an­nu­al main­te­nance of the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant, shift­ing it to Au­gust in a move to re­duce dis­rup­tion to cit­i­zens.

In a joint de­ci­sion with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the shut­down—pre­vi­ous­ly held at vary­ing times in Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber, or No­vem­ber—will now take place from Au­gust 19 to 23, 2025.

WASA’s new ex­ec­u­tive team said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed years of com­plaints about the tim­ing of the main­te­nance.

The change will al­low cit­i­zens to pre­pare for na­tion­al events with­out in­ter­rup­tion to their wa­ter sup­ply.

The Au­thor­i­ty is work­ing close­ly with De­sal­cott, the plant’s own­er and op­er­a­tor, to min­imise in­con­ve­nience dur­ing the five-day shut­down.

Mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures will in­clude pri­ori­tised truck-borne wa­ter de­liv­ery and ad­vance dis­tri­b­u­tion of sup­ply sched­ules to af­fect­ed ar­eas.

The Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant sup­plies 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day to WASA, serv­ing the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and com­mu­ni­ties in Cen­tral and South-West Trinidad.