Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is tak­ing ac­tion to pre­vent a wa­ter cri­sis as the is­land braces for drought-like con­di­tions in the next two months.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists have warned of ex­treme tem­per­a­tures as the El Ni­no ef­fect in­ten­si­fies and heavy Sa­hara dust lim­its the amount of rain­fall in To­ba­go.

The wa­ter sit­u­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to be ex­ac­er­bat­ed as thou­sands of vis­i­tors flock to the is­land next month for the an­nu­al car­ni­val, in­creas­ing the de­mand for the cru­cial re­source.

Dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said the Di­vi­sion of Tourism has iden­ti­fied crit­i­cal ar­eas to sus­tain op­er­a­tions at the var­i­ous ho­tels and restau­rants.

“Wa­ter go be scarce, so that means we have to plan. We had tourism look­ing at what the needs are for that in­dus­try, so we know what our ho­tels and restau­rants re­quire,” Au­gus­tine said.

The Spey­side as­sem­bly­man said the Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture Nathisha Charles-Pan­tin was al­so present and dis­cussed the dredg­ing of dams to in­crease wa­ter re­ten­tion.

In May, Au­gus­tine an­nounced the King’s Bay Dam would be dredged. How­ev­er, he said ac­cess roads need­ed to be built be­fore that could take place.

Sec­re­tary of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Ricky Joe­field was al­so present at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing where de­sali­na­tion plants were pro­posed.

Au­gus­tine said the THA is look­ing at mo­bile units and mod­u­lar units.

“We look­ing at how we gonna fund these so­lu­tions. We look­ing at what we could pro­vide and we prepar­ing. We can’t wait un­til the drought reach or the dry sea­son come, and throw our hands in the air and say we have no wa­ter.”

Au­gus­tine said meet­ings with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) are in the pipeline as they ce­ment plans.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion head Regi­nald Mac Lean told Guardian Me­dia the sit­u­a­tion was pre­car­i­ous as the is­land could run out of wa­ter by the end of Oc­to­ber.

He said at a pre­vi­ous meet­ing of stake­hold­ers, ad­di­tion­al wa­ter trucks were pro­posed as a so­lu­tion.

How­ev­er, he is ap­peal­ing for a more sus­tain­able plan to pro­vide for the ba­sic needs of the pop­u­la­tion.

“Even if you bring more wa­ter trucks on the is­land, where they gonna get the wa­ter from?” he asked.

“If you bring a wa­ter truck and Blue Wa­ters Inn needs wa­ter, that one wa­ter truck will have to ser­vice us every day or every oth­er day. So you bring eight wa­ter trucks to To­ba­go, that is eight re­sorts. That doesn’t even take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion your peo­ple who are liv­ing on the is­land, and, to me, peo­ple come first be­fore tourism.”

Mac Lean be­lieves wells on the is­land are un­der tremen­dous strain to meet the de­mands. He warned that its salin­i­ty could be af­fect­ed in the long run if oth­er al­ter­na­tives are not found.

He said stake­hold­ers are look­ing for­ward to the Goldb­sorough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant be­com­ing op­er­a­tional, but said that fa­cil­i­ty alone is not suf­fi­cient.

The Blue Wa­ters Inn man­ag­er re­vealed his Spey­side ho­tel is get­ting an­oth­er de­sali­na­tion plant to boost its sup­ply.