De­spite the start of the 2024 Wet Sea­son on Sat­ur­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) says the pre-ex­ist­ing wa­ter sup­ply sit­u­a­tion has not yet changed.

As at Tues­day, the lev­els at T&T’s four main im­pound­ing reser­voirs com­pared to the long-term av­er­age (LTA) are as fol­lows:

Are­na is 26.6 per cent lev­el while 54.8 per cent LTA.

Navet is 30.4 per cent lev­el while 47.9 per cent LTA.

Hol­lis is 37.1 per cent lev­el while 43.5 per cent LTA.

Hills­bor­ough is 40.9 per cent lev­el while 57.1 LTA.

WASA says as a re­sult of the harsh dry sea­son and the im­pact on reser­voir and riv­er lev­els, they have had to cut back pro­duc­tion at all of its ma­jor sur­face wa­ter treat­ment plants, in keep­ing with its Wa­ter Sup­ply Man­age­ment Plan. At present, these cut­backs are ac­count­ing for an ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 mil­lion gal­lons per day (mgd) deficit in WASA’s over­all wa­ter pro­duc­tion. Among the fa­cil­i­ties af­fect­ed are the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (WTP), where pro­duc­tion has been re­duced from the nor­mal 75 to 45 mgd; Navet, from 19.8 to 15 mgd; Hol­lis, from 8.4 to 5 mgd; North Oropouche, from 20 to 14 mgd; sim­i­lar­ly, in To­ba­go, the Cour­land, Rich­mond, Kings Bay and Hills­bor­ough West WTPs have ex­pe­ri­enced a com­bined re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tion from 4.6 to 1.9 mgd.

WASA says it is con­tin­u­ing to pru­dent­ly man­age this sit­u­a­tion, through a se­ries of on­go­ing mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures that in­cludes amend­ments to ex­ist­ing wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules, redi­rect­ing sup­plies from less im­pact­ed to more im­pact­ed ar­eas, ex­pand­ed wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty, re­duc­tion of the leak back­log to un­der 500, the on­go­ing in­tro­duc­tion of new wells or ground­wa­ter sup­plies to sup­ple­ment sur­face wa­ter sources.