KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of cen­tral and south Trinidad will need to mon­i­tor their wa­ter us­age close­ly next week as De­sal­cott has an­nounced a shut­down of its Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant from next Mon­day un­til No­vem­ber 17.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at De­sal­cott’s Point Lisas of­fice, act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er Ra­jesh Ra­goo­nanan ex­plained that the shut­down was es­sen­tial to car­ry out main­te­nance on var­i­ous parts of the plant.

De­sal­cott sup­plies WASA with 40 mil­lion gal­lons of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter, ac­count­ing for 40 per cent of south Trinidad’s wa­ter sup­ply. “We ex­pect to stop de­liv­ery to WASA at mid­night on Mon­day, and we will be down for five days for main­te­nance, with the plant ex­pect­ed to be back up on Sun­day,” Ra­goo­nanan said.

He added that the an­nu­al ex­er­cise was nec­es­sary to per­form crit­i­cal work on the plant’s hold­ing tanks, flux head basins, and wet wells, in­clud­ing re­pairs to con­crete struc­tures and sludge re­moval mech­a­nisms on the flux head basin. WASA act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main said the shut­down will af­fect ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350,000 peo­ple.

How­ev­er, he said WASA had con­tin­gency plans, in­clud­ing restor­ing the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant to full ca­pac­i­ty, yield­ing 75 mil­lion gal­lons per day, in­creas­ing pe­ri­od­ic out­put at the Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, and boost­ing truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply.

“There will be new sched­ules set for the ar­eas im­pact­ed, which will be pub­lished by to­mor­row at the lat­est and made avail­able on all me­dia plat­forms,” Ro­main said.

He said some cus­tomers who usu­al­ly re­ceive a 24/7 sup­ply may re­ceive wa­ter for on­ly three to four days, while those at the ex­trem­i­ties of the net­work may re­ceive wa­ter once every nine days.

Last month, low rain­fall led to pro­duc­tion is­sues, forc­ing cur­tail­ments at the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, with out­put drop­ping to as low as 55 mil­lion gal­lons per day.

De­spite on­go­ing com­plaints, Ro­main said there will al­ways be ar­eas with re­duced sup­ply, but WASA was pur­su­ing an ag­gres­sive well-drilling pro­gramme to sup­ply un­der­served and un­served com­mu­ni­ties.

De­sal­cott had ini­tial­ly planned the shut­down last month, but Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les asked ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Yash­mid Kara­math to de­lay it due to low reser­voir lev­els, which im­pact­ed pro­duc­tion lev­els.

Ro­main added that the Ca­roni Riv­er’s lev­els were sig­nif­i­cant­ly low, lead­ing WASA to fur­ther re­duce pro­duc­tion at the plant. With the Navet Reser­voir un­der 50 per cent, Ro­main not­ed that the cur­rent wet sea­son has been rel­a­tive­ly dry, a sign of cli­mate change.

“We live in a volatile, un­cer­tain, com­plex, and am­bigu­ous world, and know­ing that, we an­tic­i­pate harsh con­di­tions and plan ac­cord­ing­ly. WASA is im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to man­age these chal­lenges,” he said.

In the mean­time, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has ad­vised cus­tomers to fill their tanks, store wa­ter in the com­ing days, and prac­tice wa­ter con­ser­va­tion.