Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

T&T's nat­ur­al aquifers are now un­der threat due to river­ine quar­ry­ing, ham­per­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty's abil­i­ty to pro­duce potable wa­ter.

Al­ready faced with a se­vere short­age of rain­fall, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA's) cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Daniel Plen­ty, ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that some quar­ry op­er­a­tions have im­pact­ed on WASA's abil­i­ty to pro­duce wa­ter.

Some of these quar­ries were lo­cat­ed close to WASA's Acono plant in Mara­cas/St Joseph, Va­len­cia and up­stream of the Gua­napo Wa­ter treat­ment plant, Plen­ty said.

"WASA sup­ports the call for the prop­er reg­u­la­tion and con­trol of quar­ries lo­cat­ed close to river­ine ecosys­tems. How­ev­er, the main is­sue fac­ing WASA right now is the lack of rain­fall," Plen­ty re­vealed.

WASA has im­ple­ment­ed a lim­it­ed sup­ply for most of Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter reser­voir lev­els con­tin­ue to dip.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), Ter­rence Bed­doe, as well as sec­re­tary Gary Aboud called on the Gov­ern­ment to stop the clog­ging of aquifers and wa­ter cours­es caused by quar­ry­ing. Both men called for an im­me­di­ate sus­pen­sion of all quar­ries near river­ine ecosys­tems.

"For 15 years FFOS has feared and warned of what ap­pears to be in 2015, an un­prece­dent­ed wa­ter short­age/drought cri­sis. Now it is on our doorstep. Of­fi­cial fore­casts are that Trinidad, and es­pe­cial­ly To­ba­go, is run­ning aground as we face se­ri­ous wa­ter short­ages at the end of the "rainy sea­son," Aboud said.

He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the bud­get did not ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal mis­man­age­ment and degra­da­tion.

"For the Bud­get, we ex­pect­ed that ma­jor en­vi­ron­ment is­sues of mis­man­age­ment and degra­da­tion would have been ad­dressed, in­clud­ing an in­te­grat­ed wa­ter and wa­ter­shed/ aquifer man­age­ment plan specif­i­cal­ly in the north­ern re­gion of Trinidad, as all rivers in the south­land are dead or dan­ger­ous­ly pol­lut­ed, and they were not," Aboud said.

Say­ing T&T's lead­ers seemed to mis­un­der­stand the crit­i­cal in­ter­de­pen­dence of pub­lic and en­vi­ron­men­tal health, Aboud added: "There are no food crops or live­stock if there is no wa­ter.

"There are no pol­li­nat­ing bees or but­ter­flies if we face drought."

He said nu­mer­ous stud­ies and re­ports lodged in the li­brary of the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency (WRA) show that WASA's wa­ter in­takes are un­able to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly due to the sil­ta­tion caused by up­stream quar­ry ac­tiv­i­ties.

"The recharge of un­der­ground wa­ter stor­age ca­pac­i­ty (aquifers) be­comes lim­it­ed due to the sil­ta­tion, de­nuda­tion and ac­cel­er­at­ed clog­ging of river­ine ecosys­tems. Both the (Patrick) Man­ning and (Kam­la) Per­sad-Bisses­sar regimes rub­ber-stamped ap­provals for quar­ries in the North­ern Range wa­ter­shed ar­eas and it is ac­cel­er­at­ing the cri­sis," Aboud added.

Say­ing fresh potable re­gen­er­at­ing riv­er wa­ter must be pro­tect­ed at all costs, Aboud called on the Gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic the state of T&T's wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty.

"In the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and good pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, our Gov­ern­ment is oblig­ed to make pub­lic this Strate­gic EIA guard­ed un­nec­es­sar­i­ly by the pre­vi­ous regime," Aboud said.

"Un­til our na­tion­al wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty is safe­guard­ed, we call on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty by sus­pend­ing all quar­ries which ex­ist near to or along­side river­ine ecosys­tems that have been grant­ed ap­proval by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments un­til the im­pact of these quar­ries on the aquifers and WASA in­take fil­ters can be de­ter­mined and mit­i­gat­ed."

He al­so called for the ap­point­ment of a joint com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine and ad­vise on mit­i­ga­tion reg­u­la­tions/re­lo­ca­tion. That com­mit­tee, Aboud said, should con­sist of the WRA, WASA, a com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­er, an en­vi­ron­men­tal NGO, the Quar­ry As­so­ci­a­tion, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).