Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has ac­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures aimed at ad­dress­ing the wor­ry­ing­ly low wa­ter lev­els at the na­tion’s reser­voirs and a harsh, hot dry sea­son which shows very lit­tle signs of abat­ing.

Al­ready, the wa­ter sup­ply of over half a mil­lion peo­ple has been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, mean­ing they have been strug­gling to get a steady sup­ply of wa­ter.

Among the mea­sures to com­bat the dwin­dling wa­ter ca­pac­i­ty will be a re­vi­sion of the na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule, mon­i­tor­ing of the wa­ter pro­duc­tion and sup­ply chal­lenges and the re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter from “re­silient ar­eas to those ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.”

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Nico­lette Duke ex­plained that T&T was un­der­go­ing a hot­ter and dry­er dry sea­son than usu­al.

“In its cli­mate out­look newslet­ter for the Caribbean, just last month there was an is­sue in which the Caribbean Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum not­ed that 2024 is shap­ing up to be of cli­mate ex­tremes in the Caribbean with an in­tense heat sea­son con­sist­ing of re­cur­rent heat waves,” she said.

The harsh dry sea­son, char­ac­terised by siz­zling tem­per­a­tures, has not on­ly added to dai­ly dis­com­fort, but dried up WASA’ s sup­ply. The au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor, Shaira Ali, said the de­vi­a­tion in rain­fall trends from the long-term av­er­age and pro­ject­ed rain­fall to­tals have im­pact­ed the recharg­ing rate of reser­voirs.

“The dry­er than nor­mal con­di­tions that have per­sist­ed through­out the dry sea­son to date is af­fect­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide a re­silient and sus­tain­able wa­ter sup­ply to some ar­eas,” she said.

Ali al­so said the out­look for the 2024 dry sea­son fore­casts a pe­ri­od of dry­er than nor­mal con­di­tions. This was seen in the first half of the dry sea­son from Jan­u­ary to March. She al­so said the to­tal rain­fall at the four reser­voirs was low­er than the com­bined pro­jec­tion be­tween Jan­u­ary and April. The Hol­lis reser­voir record­ed 296.5 mm of rain­fall com­pared to the pro­ject­ed 551.6 mm; Ca­roni Are­na reser­voir re­ceived 220.7 mm com­pared to the 408.5mm pro­jec­tion; Navet reser­voir reg­is­tered 281.8 mm of rain­fall while 335.1 mm was pro­ject­ed and Hills­bor­ough re­ceived 292.8 mm com­pared to 271 mm of rain­fall.

Ali said al­ready, an es­ti­mat­ed 600,000 peo­ple across the coun­try were im­pact­ed by the re­duc­tion in ca­pac­i­ty lev­els of reser­voirs.

“At present, Trinidad has record­ed a deficit of 33.5 IMGD (im­pe­r­i­al mil­lion gal­lons per day) or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of to­tal ca­pac­i­ty, whilst To­ba­go is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a deficit of 2.85 IMGD or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 43 per cent of to­tal pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty. The pro­duc­tion short­fall has pro­found­ly im­pact­ed the wa­ter sup­ply across dif­fer­ent re­gions,” Ali said.

Al­le­vi­a­tion plans

The coun­try’s reser­voir sta­tus has sub­se­quent­ly de­clined due to the con­di­tions.

• Ca­roni / Are­na reser­voir—cur­rent 35 per cent; LTA (long term av­er­age) 60 per cent

• Hol­lis reser­voir—cur­rent 45 per cent; LTA 49 per cent

• Navet reser­voir—cur­rent 38 per cent; LTA 53 per cent

• Hills­bor­ough reser­voir—cur­rent 48 per cent; LTA 58 per cent

The Au­thor­i­ty has tak­en note of the im­pact of cli­mate change and ex­treme weath­er con­di­tions and has ac­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures.

Mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures:

• The im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of a Cen­tral Com­mand Cen­tre to mon­i­tor pro­duc­tion and sup­ply chal­lenges on a 24-hour ba­sis;

• In­creased wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty with ser­vice cen­tralised to the Com­mand Cen­tre with re­gion­al truck­ing sched­ules es­tab­lished;

• The Cus­tomer Call Cen­tre op­er­a­tional on a 24-hour ba­sis to re­ceive and ad­dress the needs of im­pact­ed com­mu­ni­ties;

• Sup­ply will be re­dis­trib­uted from more re­silient ar­eas to ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed ar­eas;

• DE­SAL­COTT will pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al sup­ply to bol­ster south­west and south cen­tral sup­ply zones. Sev­en Seas De­sali­na­tion has been con­tract­ed to in­crease pro­duc­tion by an ad­di­tion­al 300,000 gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly;

• Na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules will be re­vised and pub­lished;

• Health in­sti­tu­tions, se­nior cit­i­zen homes, schools and re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions will re­main a pri­or­i­ty.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les as­sured that ini­tia­tives, like the Com­mu­ni­ty Wa­ter Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme and the Na­tion­al Wa­ter Sec­tor Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gramme, which in­cludes the com­mis­sion­ing of wells, wa­ter treat­ment plants and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al projects, have ex­pand­ed the au­thor­i­ty’s ca­pac­i­ty to source and dis­trib­ute wa­ter.

But T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice act­ing di­rec­tor Sha­keer Baig said the com­ing weeks will of­fer no respite from the rag­ing heat.

“At least for the month of May, we will con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence hot and dry con­di­tions and by the end of May in­to June, we will start see­ing some rain­fall. I’m hop­ing it can be sig­nif­i­cant to help our friends out at WASA but the ini­tial set of rain­fall may not be very sig­nif­i­cant,” he said.

Act­ing WASA CEO Kelvin Ro­main al­so 350 pres­sure log­gers, used to mea­sure and doc­u­ment pres­sure and oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics per­tain­ing to wa­ter sup­ply, have been pro­cured for just over TT$1 mil­lion.