Res­i­dents of sev­er­al ar­eas af­fect­ed by a short­fall in the sup­ply of potable wa­ter by the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny (De­sal­cott) have now had their pipe-borne wa­ter re­stored. The com­pa­ny ex­plained there was a built-in sys­tem of scrap­ers at the plant de­signed to re­move sludge but over time a buildup of ma­te­r­i­al oc­curred be­cause of "sol­id im­pu­ri­ties" such as shells.

The scrap­ers have a fail-safe mech­a­nism to en­sure block­age does not re­sult in ma­jor dam­age to the sys­tem. How­ev­er, last Sat­ur­day one of the scrap­ers ac­ti­vat­ed un­ex­pect­ed­ly. A rapid clean-out of the af­fect­ed sec­tion be­gan the fol­low­ing evening and was com­plet­ed on Mon­day, but be­cause of the amount of or­gan­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the cleaned-out and re­filled basin, ex­ten­sive flush­ing and ster­il­i­sa­tion was nec­es­sary. This went on un­til the wa­ter qual­i­ty reached an ac­cept­able lev­el.

Af­fect­ed ar­eas in­clud­ed Clax­ton Bay, Es­per­ance, Debe, Pe­nal, South Oropouche, La Brea, San Fer­nan­do and its en­vi­rons, Pleas­antville, Fyz­abad, San­ta Flo­ra and Pa­lo Seco. By agree­ment the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty buys all wa­ter pro­duced by De­sal­cott, aug­ment­ing the sup­ply to cen­tral and south Trinidad.