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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Officials: Every drop of water counts

by

Rishard Khan
2369 days ago
20190112
Minister of Public Utilities Robert Le Hunte, right, speaks with the Trinidad and Tobago Met Office’s Climatologist Kaidar Kissoon during the press conference at the Ministry of Public Utilities, Alexandra Street St. Clair, Port- of-Spain, yesterday.

Minister of Public Utilities Robert Le Hunte, right, speaks with the Trinidad and Tobago Met Office’s Climatologist Kaidar Kissoon during the press conference at the Ministry of Public Utilities, Alexandra Street St. Clair, Port- of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Cit­i­zens need to do their part to con­serve wa­ter dur­ing the dry sea­son as every drop counts. That’s the ad­vice from Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials for what is ex­pect­ed to be a harsh sea­son.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte ad­mit­ted there are sev­er­al short­com­ings on the part of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) but said that does not ab­solve cit­i­zens from do­ing their part to con­serve wa­ter.

“Over the next few months, every one of us will have to be our broth­er’s keep­er in re­la­tion to how we mon­i­tor, man­age and use our wa­ter re­sources,” he said.

How­ev­er, Le Hunte said cit­i­zens should not be wor­ried.

“We have been here be­fore, we’ve done this be­fore with WASA in this coun­try and we have learn—WASA has learnt in pre­vi­ous times. They have a plan in place to deal with it,” he said.

Dur­ing this dry sea­son, Trinidad is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 29 mm or 10 per cent less rain­fall than in pre­vi­ous years, while­To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence 56 mm or 24 per cent less rain­fall.

WASA’s records in­di­cate that the coun­ty’s de­mand for wa­ter typ­i­cal­ly in­creas­es by 16 mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons dur­ing the dry sea­son. Com­pound­ing the is­sue, WASA es­ti­mates that al­most 50 per cent of the na­tion’s wa­ter sup­ply is lost through sur­face and sub-sur­face leaks from age­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

While 59 per cent of the coun­try’s wa­ter is sup­plied by sur­face wa­ter sources such as reser­voirs and rivers which are fed by rain­fall and rivers, they are es­pe­cial­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to evap­o­ra­tion dur­ing the dry sea­son. Ac­cord­ing to WASA, wa­ter lost by evap­o­ra­tion amounts to 190 mil­lion gal­lons for the en­tire dry sea­son or 1.3 mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons per day, which is enough to meet the needs of 593,000 house­holds.

Adding to this, Le Hunte said, cit­i­zens use be­tween 83 gal­lons to 95 gal­lons of wa­ter a day—twice as much as the 44 gal­lons ref­er­enced by the Unit­ed Na­tions as the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard.

“The fact that each of us us­es dou­ble the rec­om­mend­ed amount of wa­ter means that if we were to ac­tu­al­ly keep to the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, we could sup­ply wa­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go twice over,” he said.

Le Hunte said in prepa­ra­tion for the sea­son, WASA is re­pair­ing 28 wells hich is ex­pect­ed to add 5 mil­lion gal­lons to the ex­ist­ing sys­tem. It is al­so putting mea­sures in place to re­ha­bil­i­tate an­oth­er ten wells, which would add a fur­ther 1.5 mil­lion gal­lons. WASA is drilling two ad­di­tion­al wells which they an­tic­i­pate will con­tribute 0.5 mil­lion gal­lons a day. One is be­ing dug in Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go and the oth­er in Arou­ca. They are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in April.

Le Hunte al­so said De­sal­cott has been re-tool­ing and up­grad­ing its plant to main­tain pro­duc­tion re­li­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing the dry sea­son. WASA has al­so un­der­tak­en a re­pair pro­gramme to fix some 2,000 leaks in their aged in­fra­struc­ture, the ma­jor­i­ty of which are un­der­ground. They will al­so be en­gag­ing in a pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign.


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