The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said un­til the sus­pen­sion of pro­duc­tion at the Co­corite Far­rell Well Field, that sys­tem gen­er­at­ed two mil­lion gal­lons of potable wa­ter a day for con­sumers in the Port-of-Spain and Diego Mar­tin ar­eas. In ad­di­tion, all wa­ter pro­duced by WASA, pri­or to trans­mis­sion to con­sumers, go through a strict treat­ment process in ac­cor­dance with World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion stan­dards, for wa­ter qual­i­ty, which is of­ten ex­ceed­ed. The util­i­ty is­sued a state­ment on this mat­ter in re­sponse to the lat­est state­ments at­trib­uted to Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing, in which it is be­ing asked to es­tab­lish the pota­bil­i­ty (drink­a­bil­i­ty) of the wa­ter at its Co­corite Far­rell Well Field.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Ellen Lewis, op­er­a­tion of the well field was sus­pend­ed in 1992 due to the in­tru­sion of salt wa­ter in the aquifer and not as a con­se­quence of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. "Wa­ter qual­i­ty tests con­duct­ed by the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency have shown that there are no harm­ful mi­cro or­gan­isms or any oth­er like­ly form of con­t­a­m­i­nant to the ground­wa­ter," Lewis ex­plained. She added: "It was pri­mar­i­ly as a con­se­quence of the in­tru­sion of salt wa­ter and the pe­ri­od of ex­ploita­tion of the wells, that pro­duc­tion was tem­porar­i­ly dis­con­tin­ued to al­low the aquifers to recharge. "Af­ter the lapse of 19 years, the au­thor­i­ty is now sat­is­fied the aquifers have suf­fi­cient­ly re­cov­ered to be­gin the re-de­vel­op­ment of the well field."

Lewis said dur­ing the pe­ri­od the aquifers were left to re­gen­er­ate, WASA "re­mained in un­in­ter­rupt­ed oc­cu­pa­tion and con­tin­ued to man­age the well field con­duct­ing, at min­i­mum, one in­spec­tion a month for the pur­pose of con­duct­ing tests on wa­ter lev­els as well as wa­ter qual­i­ty, to de­ter­mine the re-de­vel­op­ment of the field." The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has re­cent­ly sought to chal­lenge WASA's le­gal right to own­er­ship of the Co­corite Far­rell Well Field, the site of 35 arte­sian wells. The util­i­ty con­tends that by virtue of Sec­tion 11 of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Act 1965, Chap­ter 54:40, the 23- acre par­cel of land was vest­ed in WASA by statu­to­ry con­veyance.