SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply is to in­crease by 6.5 mil­lion gal­lons per day (MGD) in 2013.Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh said so when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at a cer­e­mo­ny to com­mem­o­rate the largest pipeline pur­chase by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) on Fri­day at Fac­to­ry Road, Ch­agua­nas.

Singh said De­sal­cott would al­so be ex­pand­ed to pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al ten MGD by 2014 and an ad­di­tion­al ten MGD would be sourced from the wa­ter reuse project at Beetham for in­dus­tri­al use. Ex­plo­rations are be­ing done in To­ba­go to boost sup­plies by an ad­di­tion­al 4.5 MGD by 2014, he said.Singh said an ag­gres­sive leak man­age­ment plan had been in­tro­duced in­clud­ing pres­sure re­duc­tion pro­grammes and em­pha­sis on the re­place­ment of heav­i­ly-leak­ing trans­mis­sion pipelines.

He said the to­tal length of the pur­chased pipelines was 163 km in the first or­der in ad­di­tion to a sec­ond or­der of 79 km. He said 73 km of PVC pipe was al­so or­dered from the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er Cen­tu­ry Es­lon.The first or­der, from the Chi­nese man­u­fac­ture Xin Xing, was pur­chased for around $250 mil­lion through an on­line bid­ding process, he said, adding that WASA saved al­most S100 mil­lion by not pur­chas­ing the pipes through tra­di­tion­al meth­ods.

Singh said the pipes will go a long way in re­duc­ing leak­age and cre­ate a na­tion­al grid for flex­i­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of sup­ply.He said the projects ear­marked for re­place­ment are the old Hol­lis line, the du­al­ing of the Ca­roni Trunk Main, Cu­mo­to Main Road, Mara­cas Roy­al Road, Biche, Are­na and the rerout­ing of pipelines to fa­cil­i­tate the new high­way con­struc­tion to Point Fortin.

Singh said do­mes­tic me­ter­ing would be­gin this year in the north-west re­gion. He said me­ter­ing, pipeline re­place­ment and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion should go a long way in re­duc­ing de­mand.