The Navet Reser­voir which sup­plies the ma­jor­i­ty of the South East­ern parts of the coun­try with wa­ter is 23 per cent be­low the av­er­age which it should be at this point in the dry sea­son.

This was re­vealed by act­ing Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Alan Poon-King as he toured the Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Fa­cil­i­ty on Sat­ur­day.

In light of this, they have scaled back wa­ter pro­duc­tion by three mil­lion gal­lons.

"We al­ways have to project to en­sure we have enough wa­ter stored to car­ry us through the dry sea­son," Poon-King said.

The Navet reser­voir, along with the Are­na, Hol­lis, and Hills­bor­ough are the ma­jor sources of wa­ter to T&T. All these reser­voirs have ex­pe­ri­enced wa­ter de­ple­tion dur­ing this year’s dry sea­son, how­ev­er, Navet is the most af­fect­ed.

"The Navet reser­voir is around 23 per cent be­low the long-term av­er­age for this time of year. The oth­er reser­voirs are al­so be­low their long-term av­er­age but not as sig­nif­i­cant as at this fa­cil­i­ty. Be­tween Hol­lis, which is in Va­len­cia, and the Are­na which is our largest and that sup­ports the Ca­roni plant, they are around 10 per cent be­low long-term av­er­age. Hills­bor­ough which is in To­ba­go is about three to four per cent be­low," Poon-King ex­plained.

One of the rea­sons why the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing low reser­voir lev­els is due to it ex­pe­ri­enc­ing less than nor­mal rain­fall last De­cem­ber. Rain­fall is cur­rent­ly the main re­plen­ish­er of the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply.

Com­pound­ing the low lev­els, is the au­thor­i­ty's age­ing in­fra­struc­ture which los­es an es­ti­mat­ed 50 per cent of the wa­ter it pro­duces to leaks. How­ev­er, over the last two months, WASA has been able to bring the num­ber of leaks down from 2,786 to 1,770.

While the CEO ad­mit­ted this had an un­de­ni­able ef­fect on the wa­ter sup­ply, he said it did not ab­solve cit­i­zens from do­ing their part in con­serv­ing wa­ter.

“In every­thing you do, try to con­serve wa­ter as much as pos­si­ble so that any ap­pli­ca­tion you have for fresh wa­ter, re­duce the vol­ume you use and if you can, use an al­ter­na­tive sup­ply if you have your own pond or what­ev­er, use that as an al­ter­na­tive to wa­ter the plants and that sort of thing.”

In an ef­fort to help mit­i­gate the de­ple­tion of the sup­ply, the au­thor­i­ty im­ple­ment­ed re­stric­tions, in ac­cor­dance with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age act 54:40 to pre­vent wastage.

Mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed

Sup­ply Re­dis­tri­b­u­tion – re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter from un­af­fect­ed ar­eas with high pres­sures to more wa­ter-stressed ar­eas lo­cat­ed on the pe­riph­ery of the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

Reser­voir Man­age­ment – The wa­ter lev­els from the four main reser­voirs are mon­i­tored and man­aged through­out the dry sea­son.

In­creased Ground Wa­ter Pro­duc­tion – Steps are be­ing tak­en to ob­tain wa­ter from ground sources and close­ly mon­i­tor­ing and ser­vic­ing ex­ist­ing well equip­ment

Main­tain De­sal Sup­ply – WASA has been in dis­cus­sion with the var­i­ous de­sali­na­tion plants about op­ti­mis­ing and their plant op­er­a­tions and pro­duc­tion dur­ing this pe­ri­od

Plant As­set Man­age­ment – Plans are in place to en­sure WASA plants op­er­ate at op­ti­mal lev­els and that there is min­i­mal down­time for nec­es­sary re­pairs.

In­creased wa­ter truck­ing – WASA’s wa­ter truck­ing fleet will be ex­pand­ed dur­ing the dry sea­son.