Wa­ter boils at 100 °C. With dry taps, the cit­i­zens of T&T are reach­ing their boil­ing point as the wa­ter cri­sis deep­ens.

Some of the pres­sure to 'burst res­i­dents’ pipes' is caused by the age­ing and rust­ed met­al pipelines, thou­sands of leaks through­out the coun­try and the length of time the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) takes to re­spond to re­pair them.

To ex­ac­er­bate the mat­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte warned that if con­sumers don't pay their wa­ter bill they will be dis­con­nect­ed. He stat­ed in a Sun­day Guardian re­port last week­end that they need $13B to fix some of WASA's is­sues.

With the grave short­age, WASA has been ra­tioning wa­ter in ar­eas through­out the coun­try.

Apart from the short­age, cit­i­zens have to con­tend with brack­ish wa­ter com­ing out of taps and forced to pay for wa­ter while un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­peo­ple prof­it by in­creas­ing the price on wa­ter tanks.

Op­po­si­tion MP for Ma­yaro Rush­ton Paray re­cent­ly warned that res­i­dents in Ma­yaro and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties had been go­ing with­out a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply for sev­er­al months and if the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed can lead to an up­ris­ing by res­i­dents rem­i­nis­cent of the March 23, 1903 Wa­ter Ri­ots re­sult­ing in the Red House set afire and the deaths of 16 peo­ple and 42 in­jured.

What are we do­ing, what can be done?

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Trinidad-born Dr Ki­ran To­ta-Ma­haraj, head of Civ­il and En­vi­ron­men­tal En­gi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land, Bris­tol, UK, for some so­lu­tions to the coun­try’s wa­ter woes.

To­ta-Ma­haraj said WASA has been very out­dat­ed in the meth­ods, man­age­ment, and sys­tems it has in place. "It’s prob­a­bly still us­ing a lot of tech­niques done 20-30 years ago, with an age­ing in­fra­struc­ture," he said.

Leak­age is a mas­sive prob­lem in T&T, the way leaks are iden­ti­fied, mon­i­tored and al­so main­tained, it is out­dat­ed.

"A lot more changes are need­ed in terms of iden­ti­fy­ing leaks, such as em­ploy­ing ground-pen­e­trat­ing radar to iden­ti­fy sim­ple cracks.

What T&T needs to do is look at the ac­tu­al wa­ter reser­voirs and start with sim­ple so­lu­tions such as find­ing some sort of ef­fec­tive cov­er­ing, a float­ing, im­per­me­able ma­te­r­i­al for dams to re­duce the rate of evap­o­ra­tion."

He said there was al­so the use of some sort of mould in­jec­tion sys­tem for wa­ter treat­ment.

To­ta-Ma­haraj, a project en­gi­neer with the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter Se­cu­ri­ty Net­work, said look­ing at wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion pipelines was step one, un­til WASA ad­dressed the leaks, since it will be quite chal­leng­ing for the au­thor­i­ty to tell mem­bers of the pub­lic that they had to pay for wa­ter when there were not a con­stant 24 hours wa­ter sup­ply.

He said Sin­ga­pore em­ployed a closed loop sys­tem where waste wa­ter was prop­er­ly treat­ed and re­turned to full pu­ri­ty.

De­sal plants, not the ul­ti­mate so­lu­tion

To­ta-Ma­haraj said de­sali­na­tion plants were not the ul­ti­mate so­lu­tion, stud­ies done in T&T with riv­er flows, showed that if prop­er­ly man­aged both sur­face and ground­wa­ter dur­ing the rainy sea­son can be stored and dis­trib­uted to com­mu­ni­ties.

He said there was too much de­pen­den­cy on de­sali­na­tion plants—when there was a se­vere drought in South Africa, the first thing the Gov­ern­ment con­tem­plat­ed was build­ing a de­sali­na­tion plant in Cape Town. He said, how­ev­er, once the riv­er wa­ters went back up and reser­voirs were filled af­ter sev­er­al days of rain, the South African Gov­ern­ment re­con­sid­ered its de­ci­sion.

Be­sides be­ing en­er­gy in­ten­sive, there was al­so an en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact with de­sali­na­tion plants. A BBC re­port in Jan­u­ary in­di­cat­ed that de­sali­na­tion plants around the world were pump­ing out far more salt laden brine than pre­vi­ous­ly be­lieved.

The brine rais­es the lev­el of salin­i­ty and pos­es a ma­jor risk to ocean life and ma­rine ecosys­tems.

When asked if ar­ti­fi­cial rain­mak­ing was a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion to T&T’s wa­ter prob­lems, To­ta-Ma­haraj said it was “a bit way ahead” of what the coun­try need­ed.

He said rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing and col­lec­tion was fea­si­ble in Port-of-Spain and for agri­cul­ture.

He said it will help the city based on the wa­ter ta­ble, prox­im­i­ty to the sea and es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the rainy sea­son util­is­ing sim­ple so­lu­tions such as wa­ter tanks, col­lect­ing rain run-off and de­sign­ing per­me­able pave­ments.

Knowl­edge trans­fer from UWI, UTT to WASA

To­ta-Ma­haraj said in ex­treme­ly dry sea­sons, stor­age mech­a­nisms must be con­sid­ered such as rain­wa­ter tanks for more drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion pur­pos­es.

He said WASA should be in­volved with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs

(IMA) and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions.

He said uni­ver­si­ties should be ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about the dri­ve for wa­ter con­ser­va­tion, har­vest­ing, and man­age­ment and both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor need­ed to put their minds to­geth­er to start find­ing sus­tain­able so­lu­tions.

To­ta-Ma­haraj said he worked with some very hard work­ing aca­d­e­mics in UWI and UTT.

He said with their work and projects in wa­ter and the waste wa­ter sec­tor, there should be a knowl­edge trans­fer and links with WASA and oth­er com­pa­nies in­volved in the wa­ter sec­tor.

To­ta-Ma­haraj said there need­ed to be more trans­paren­cy and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the en­ti­ties. He said the util­i­ty could use a lot of sup­port and ad­vice from the in­sti­tu­tions, well-qual­i­fied sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers at both uni­ver­si­ties.

Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions:

•Wa­ter recharg­ing of reser­voirs, dams, and aquifers

•The es­tab­lish­ment of flood re­ten­tion basins dur­ing the dry sea­son

•Golf cours­es that need thou­sands of gal­lons of wa­ter to main­tain be cur­tailed

•Em­ploy satel­lite da­ta, ge­o­graph­i­cal in­for­ma­tion sys­tem, wa­ter de­mand mod­el­ling for the pre­dic­tion and man­age­ment of wa­ter de­mand pat­terns

UWI pro­fes­sor: Cap­ture run-off, in­stall me­tres

Mean­while, UWI St Au­gus­tine Pro­fes­sor of Agri­cul­tur­al En­gi­neer­ing Reynold Stone said on the sup­ply side, to in­crease the wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty there was a need to iden­ti­fy ar­eas that could be used to cap­ture and store run-off dur­ing the rainy sea­son. Stone said cur­rent­ly, a large amount of run-off was sim­ply al­lowed to flow to the Gulf of Paria.

He said on the de­mand side, the da­ta ob­tained from WASA showed that the per capi­ta con­sump­tion of wa­ter by do­mes­tic users in T&T was much high­er than in oth­er coun­tries.

Stone said it was time to ex­plore the em­ploy­ment of wa­ter me­tres which was like­ly to en­cour­age the more re­spon­si­ble use of wa­ter re­sult­ing in re­duced con­sump­tion.

He said though it was im­plied, that by me­ter­ing, pay­ment was based on the amount of wa­ter used; if one had to pay based on us­age, one was more like­ly to re­duce waste and con­sump­tion.

How cit­i­zens can help

Asked what cit­i­zens can do to con­serve wa­ter, he said:

• The av­er­age show­er should not ex­ceed four min­utes. He said many wa­ter com­pa­nies in the UK gave out timers set for four min­utes, the du­ra­tion of their show­er

•Turn off the tap while brush­ing your teeth, in­stall toi­let de­vices that con­trol the vol­ume of wa­ter or go old tech and put a brick in the toi­let tank and use rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing for flush­ing toi­lets

•Plant trees, shrubs, and grass that pro­vid­ed shade

Who is Dr Ki­ran To­ta-Ma­haraj?

Dr Ki­ran To­ta-Ma­haraj is the Head of Civ­il & En­vi­ron­men­tal En­gi­neer­ing, Fac­ul­ty of En­vi­ron­ment and Tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land, Bris­tol (UWE Bris­tol), Unit­ed King­dom (UK). He is al­so a project en­gi­neer with the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter Se­cu­ri­ty Net­work (http://www.wa­ter­se­cu­ri­tynet­work.org/) and a char­tered en­gi­neer (CEng) with the UK's In­sti­tu­tion of Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neers (IMechE). His ap­plied en­gi­neer­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and ar­eas of re­search in­clude wa­ter sup­ply sys­tems, waste wa­ter en­gi­neer­ing, stormwa­ter man­age­ment and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture for wa­ter, waste and en­vi­ron­men­tal sec­tors. He is cur­rent­ly in­volved with re­search and en­gi­neer­ing projects ad­dress­ing re­new­able en­er­gy in wa­ter and waste wa­ter treat­ment ap­pli­ca­tions.

Next week, look out for Ki­ran To­ta-Ma­haraj's col­umn—Patch­ing up the Pipes: Tech­nolo­gies to put an end to leaky wa­ter mains