Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Frus­tra­tion is brew­ing in Spey­side as a wa­ter short­age has left res­i­dents and busi­ness­es feel­ing the strain.

It comes less than a week af­ter dry taps in Cas­tara re­sult­ed in res­i­dents block­ing the road in a fiery protest.

Dur­ing Guardian Me­dia’s jour­ney to Spey­side yes­ter­day, parts of the scenic moun­tain­side were seen scorched due to bush­fires.

Res­i­dents said it has hard­ly rained for the past few weeks, and a reg­u­lar sup­ply in their taps has al­so been hard to come by.

An ex­as­per­at­ed Regi­nald Mac Lean, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Blue Wa­ters Inn, said his prop­er­ty came with­in hours of clos­ing down re­cent­ly.

“To­day marks day num­ber eight; we have not re­ceived wa­ter in the main,” he said.

He said the ho­tel has 14 tanks, in­clud­ing three 5,000-gal­lon tanks, and a de­sali­na­tion sys­tem, which cost around $250,000 to in­stall.

Mac Lean said in the last sev­en days, he was forced to spend over $11,000 to get a truck-borne sup­ply from WASA and oth­er pri­vate en­ti­ties.

“If I didn’t get wa­ter that night, I would be check­ing every guest out the ho­tel.

“We were 76 per cent full at that time. Could you imag­ine me turn­ing around and get­ting rid of all my guests?” he asked.

Mac Lean said his 45 em­ploy­ees are al­so un­easy, as they would have had to be laid off.

“This is the fault of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go that has not re­alised the need to sup­ply To­ba­go with what it needs. Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is the one that con­trols WASA. Deal with it.”

He said the ho­tel in­stalled a two-inch line to sup­ply wa­ter to the prop­er­ty al­most 25 years ago, but this was tak­en over by WASA with the promise to change it in­to a four-inch main.

He be­lieves that line is prob­a­bly one inch now as a re­sult of cal­ci­fi­ca­tion and degra­da­tion.

Mac Lean said the price of do­ing busi­ness has be­come ex­treme­ly ex­or­bi­tant as his de­sali­na­tion sys­tem runs 24 hours per day, sev­en days a week.

“The mem­branes have to be changed—that’s $17,000. That doesn’t count the fil­ters, oils, ser­vice and main­te­nance. The pumps suck­ing the sea­wa­ter out of the sea and the oth­er trans­fer­ring the wa­ter to the stor­age fa­cil­i­ty. There is great cost we go through to keep the ho­tel run­ning.”

Mac Lean said the ho­tel has al­so im­ple­ment­ed a suite of con­ser­va­tion meth­ods in­clud­ing chang­ing all the show­er heads to wa­ter-sav­ing mod­els.

He said the beach­front prop­er­ty is al­so at risk of sea blast-dam­age as they have stopped wash­ing down cer­tain ar­eas to con­serve their sup­ply.

He said the mon­ey be­ing spent to save and get wa­ter could have been rein­vest­ed back in­to the ho­tel.

“At the end of the day, you need to do ser­vice re­pairs, main­te­nance, up­grade your prop­er­ty. That is out the win­dow be­cause the funds aren’t there to do it.”

He said busi­ness­es are be­ing hit from var­i­ous an­gles while an es­sen­tial ser­vice such as wa­ter is in­ac­ces­si­ble.

“Elec­tric­i­ty has gone up. We hav­ing to spend ex­or­bi­tant amount of mon­ey for wa­ter to keep us go­ing. When does it end?

“Al­co­hol went up 100 per cent, liquor li­cence dou­bled in price to re­new. All these things when Gov­ern­ment is talk­ing to us about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my in­to tourism, but we can’t get sim­ple things like wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and these things at rea­son­able rates or in rea­son­able amounts.”

Mac Lean said a gen­uine so­lu­tion needs to be found as he does not want to see hote­liers and res­i­dents fight­ing for the lim­it­ed sup­ply.

Mac Lean said the wa­ter short­age af­fects tourism, agri­cul­ture and the gen­er­al life of res­i­dents.

Asked whether the pro­posed de­sali­na­tion sys­tem an­nounced by Gov­ern­ment would al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem, Mac Lean said if it does not come in­to fruition then Blue Wa­ters Inn would have to shut down.

He said the ho­tel does not have the mon­ey for an­oth­er de­sali­na­tion sys­tem.

Chief Sec: De­sali­na­tion ten­ders out

Mean­while, a Spey­side food ven­dor who wished to stay anony­mous said the sit­u­a­tion is “very bad” and is af­fect­ing her busi­ness and home.

She claimed WASA does not give ad­vance no­tice when the sup­ply is be­ing re­strict­ed.

“Wa­ter does just go. Look, I had to leave here and go home to see if it have wa­ter be­cause whole week­end I couldn’t wash. It had wa­ter so I put a load in the ma­chine and come back here. It is very bad,” she said.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia he has heard the grum­blings of his elec­toral dis­trict.

“I am com­plain­ing as well...We are hav­ing a drought at the mo­ment too...So it is pres­sure on all of us,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said re­lief is com­ing as ten­ders for the de­sali­na­tion sys­tem “should be out al­ready.”

He said a road to the King’s Bay dam is be­ing built to al­low ac­cess to clean­ing and to im­prove catch­ment.

Au­gus­tine said the way it was con­struct­ed long ago, it was im­pos­si­ble to ac­cess to de­silt with­out build­ing a road.

He added, “I am ac­tu­al­ly in the dis­trict and about to move from Par­latu­vi­er across to Char­lot­teville. I am meet­ing with the vil­lage coun­cil in Char­lot­teville at 6:30 pm and the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion is high on the agen­da.”

Ef­forts to con­tact WASA for a com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.