With­in re­cent years, un­reg­u­lat­ed an­thro­pogenic ac­tiv­i­ty has served to com­pro­mise the health of rivers and wa­ter­sheds through­out T&T. This was the grim sce­nario paint­ed by act­ing CEO of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Ger­ard Yorke, at the launch of the au­thor­i­ty's third an­nu­al Na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools Quiz Com­pe­ti­tion themed In the Know with H2O: Adopt A Riv­er. The event was held at the WASA's pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre, Farm Road, St Joseph, last week.

Yorke said the quiz com­pe­ti­tion brought to light sig­nif­i­cant is­sues re­lat­ed to rivers and wa­ter­sheds which must be ad­dressed na­tion­al­ly with in­put from all cit­i­zens. A to­tal of 100 schools through­out T&T have reg­is­tered to vie for the top prize of $100,000 and the cham­pi­ons tro­phy. As in the pre­vi­ous two years of the quiz com­pe­ti­tion the sec­ond and third place win­ners will al­so be re­ward­ed with prizes of $50,000 and $25,000 re­spec­tive­ly.

In a state­ment from WASA, said sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have re­vealed de­for­esta­tion, il­le­gal wa­ter ab­strac­tion, poor min­er­al ex­trac­tion and agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices, im­prop­er waste dis­pos­al, in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing, un­planned de­vel­op­ments as well as the il­le­gal damming of rivers are un­der­min­ing the in­tegri­ty of the coun­try's wa­ter re­sources.

He said these ac­tiv­i­ties threat­ened the au­thor­i­ty's long-term goals of be­ing able to pro­vide cit­i­zens with a dai­ly sup­ply of high qual­i­ty wa­ter in an ef­fi­cient and cost ef­fec­tive man­ner. This year's com­pe­ti­tion was in sup­port of the au­thor­i­ty's Adopt A Riv­er ini­tia­tive aimed to fa­cil­i­tate mon­i­tor­ing, clean-up and en­hance­ment of rivers in T&T.

The over­all ob­jec­tive of the pro­gramme is to bring aware­ness to lo­cal wa­ter­shed is­sues and to fa­cil­i­tate the par­tic­i­pa­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties in sus­tain­able and holis­tic projects aimed at im­prov­ing the sta­tus of rivers and their wa­ter­sheds. In the com­pe­ti­tion, which of­fi­cial­ly be­gan on Mon­day, stu­dents would be re­quired to demon­strate an in-depth un­der­stand­ing of the key el­e­ments and is­sues per­tain­ing to rivers and wa­ter­sheds.