SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) are rub­bish­ing claims by a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter from re­cent­ly dug wells in Moru­ga/Table­land could lead to can­cer.

Speak­ing at a UNC Gen­er­al Elec­tion com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing in Debe on Tues­day night, in­cum­bent Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath warned Moru­ga/Table­land res­i­dents of the al­leged im­pend­ing dan­ger to their health.

He said, “To­day I could con­firm that there is a re­port in­side of WASA that the well that they have dug in Moru­ga/Table­land have a high con­cen­tra­tion of car­cino­genic ma­te­r­i­al in it and the in­struc­tion have been from the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue wa­ter pro­duc­tion through those wells.

“Tonight, I want to put the peo­ple of Moru­ga/Table­land on alert that your wa­ter sup­ply can very well lead to you get­ting can­cer for you, your fam­i­ly and chil­dren.”

The MP said the UNC was re­view­ing the re­port and would re­lease it in the com­ing days, but he called on Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Min­is­ter to say whether the re­port ex­ists.

Dis­miss­ing his claims, Gon­za­les, un­der whose tenure the work on the drills com­menced, called Padarath a “patho­log­i­cal liar and a mis­chief-mak­er.”

Gon­za­les, who is now the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, said the al­le­ga­tions were ir­re­spon­si­ble and de­signed to cause pan­ic when ef­forts are be­ing made to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion in Moru­ga by the drilling of wells and the de­silt­ing of the Trin­i­ty Dam. 

He said, “For Mr Padarath to now come and make this base­less and wicked state­ment to un­der­mine the work of the gov­ern­ment and WASA when ef­forts are be­ing made to pro­vide this com­mu­ni­ty with wa­ter re­lief, is noth­ing but di­a­bol­i­cal. There is no truth to this.”

Gon­za­les said that while drilling in that com­mu­ni­ty was still on­go­ing, once com­plet­ed, the usu­al course of ac­tion is to test the qual­i­ty of the wa­ter to as­cer­tain the ap­pro­pri­ate treat­ment to en­sure it meets World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion-ap­proved stan­dards. Not­ing that the coun­try did not have a his­to­ry of wa­ter-borne dis­eases thanks to the hard work of WASA em­ploy­ees, the for­mer util­i­ty min­is­ter said it was high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble for Padarath to “use scare tac­tics to un­der­mine the work be­ing done in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mean­while, WASA, in a me­dia re­lease, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed Padarath’s claims.

“Such as­ser­tions are not on­ly fac­tu­al­ly in­cor­rect but al­so ir­re­spon­si­bly alarmist, with the po­ten­tial to cause un­due dis­tress to the pub­lic.”

WASA as­sured it main­tained the high­est stan­dards of wa­ter qual­i­ty and pub­lic health safe­ty in strict com­pli­ance with guide­lines set by WHO, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA), and their own rig­or­ous test­ing pro­to­cols.

“The Au­thor­i­ty as­sures the pub­lic that all raw wa­ter sources, in­clud­ing the Moru­ga wells, un­der­go com­pre­hen­sive test­ing, and the re­sults con­sis­tent­ly re­flect wa­ter qual­i­ty pa­ra­me­ters that are in line with the ge­o­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the re­spec­tive ar­eas.”

The re­lease quot­ed WASA CEO, Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, who de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as “deeply trou­bling and mis­lead­ing”. Hal­l­i­day said he re­viewed the lab re­ports which showed the wa­ter qual­i­ty from the Moru­ga wells con­tained on­ly nat­u­ral­ly oc­cur­ring el­e­ments con­sis­tent with the re­gion’s ge­ol­o­gy. 

“To sug­gest oth­er­wise is a reck­less mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the facts,” the re­lease said.