With the coun­try fac­ing a wa­ter cri­sis giv­en un­prece­dent­ed low lev­el in the reser­voirs, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte says the prob­lem could be rec­ti­fied if the pub­lic cuts back its wa­ter con­sump­tion by ten per cent. "We are in a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion and there­fore we are call­ing on every­one to sort of play their part, even with­out me­ters, to con­serve wa­ter and fol­low some of the tips that we have been giv­ing out with re­gards to con­ser­va­tion," he said. In an at­tempt to high­light the crit­i­cal wa­ter sit­u­a­tion, Le Hunte, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Alan Poon King and oth­er of­fi­cials in­vit­ed the me­dia to tour the Navet Reser­voir in Tabaquite on Sat­ur­day where the wa­ter lev­els have dropped by 17.8 per cent. Not­ing that the lev­el is sup­posed to be at 48.88 per cent, Poon King said it would take 4.2 bil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter to re­fill the dam.

Not­ing that Trinidad pro­duces 240 gal­lons of wa­ter, he said, "If we all tar­get a ten per­cent re­duc­tion via all the lit­tle things that we do, that’s 24 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter. The $1 bil­lion project that we spent was on­ly go­ing to give us 10 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter, so 24 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter more in the sys­tem will solve all the prob­lems and there­fore the cheap­est way for the coun­try to get those 24 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter is by the whole of the pop­u­la­tion cut­ting back and con­serv­ing, just ten per­cent and we will be in a much bet­ter place."

The min­is­ter said he chose to tour the Navet Dam be­cause he had been re­ceiv­ing an in­crease in com­plaints, es­pe­cial­ly from par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

While some of those com­plaints have been rec­ti­fied, he said, "What we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing here in Trinidad and To­ba­go with re­gard to these lev­els and as you can see this, Mr Poon King has been work­ing in WASA for about 30 years, so he is our in­sti­tu­tion­al spe­cial­ist and this is the worst that he has ever seen. We have nev­er been at this low lev­el in the Navet Dam be­fore. If you re­mem­ber the dry pe­ri­od ac­tu­al­ly start­ed from around De­cem­ber 2018 and it went straight through and we reached to lev­els that we have nev­er seen be­fore, the worst in 19 years."

With less rain­fall in June, he said the dam was now op­er­at­ing at 37 per cent with on­ly 10 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter be­ing tak­en out on a dai­ly ba­sis in­stead of the usu­al 22 mil­lion gal­lons. Hence, the rea­son they are fac­ing is­sues with wa­ter in ar­eas with­in Ma­yaro and the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. With the open­ing of the Savonet­ta boost­er sta­tion, how­ev­er, he said for the first time they have been able to take some of the wa­ter from Ca­roni, which is sent to South, and redi­rect to Bar­rack­pore and oth­er ar­eas which the Navet Dam nor­mal­ly sup­plies.

They have been un­able to reach Ma­yaro, but they are work­ing on get­ting it done. WASA, he said, has al­so in­creased the truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply in those ar­eas. To the peo­ple who are re­luc­tant to change or ad­just their wa­ter con­sump­tion, he asked them to con­sid­er that when they waste wa­ter it will re­sult in less or no wa­ter for oth­er con­sumers.

"The whole mes­sage of con­ser­va­tion con­tin­ues to be im­por­tant. The whole idea about be­ing your broth­er's keep­er etc," said the min­is­ter.