JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

WASA creates $B tank industry

by

1287 days ago
20220109

In­vest­ing in wa­ter tanks and pumps has cost cit­i­zens more than a bil­lion dol­lars as al­most all of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fers from an in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply es­pe­cial­ly rur­al ar­eas.

The in­ad­e­quate sup­ply of wa­ter by WASA and wa­ter sched­ul­ing has meant that un­like de­vel­oped coun­tries, cit­i­zens have had to fork out thou­sands of dol­lars to buy tanks, col­lec­tive­ly cre­at­ing a bil­lion dol­lar sec­tor.

In fact, Bhag­wans­ingh’s group mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Bali­ram John told the Busi­ness Guardian that the sale of these items has al­ways been good over the years, not­ing that some­one build­ing a home for the first time, just like the av­er­age home­own­er, will have at least two tanks and a pump to start off with.

The av­er­age price for a 1,000 tank is $1,700 plus VAT but this can cost as much as $2,500 plus VAT de­pend­ing on the hard­ware where it is bought.

A 400 gal­lon tank can cost around $900 plus VAT. The cheap­est pump starts at $1,700 de­pend­ing on its horse­pow­er.

Ac­cord­ing to some home­own­ers the wa­ter sup­ply is just not good enough hence a tank has be­come es­sen­tial.

But this prob­lem is noth­ing new.

“With­out wa­ter you can do noth­ing, not even cook. My sis­ter in Pa­lo Seco has about nine tanks of dif­fer­ent sizes. Some on a height, some of the ground be­cause in the coun­try wa­ter is al­ways a prob­lem for years and years,” one res­i­dent told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian (SBG).

And over­time John ex­plained, most home­own­ers would al­so in­vest in ad­di­tion­al tanks to en­sure they have a steady sup­ply of wa­ter.

Fur­ther, he said shut­downs by the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) have added to the sales as in many ar­eas peo­ple do not re­ceive wa­ter sev­en days a week.

In fact, the av­er­age res­i­dent gets wa­ter less than three days a week.

“Many in­vest in more tanks be­cause they said the wa­ter sup­ply in not re­li­able enough,” John added.

On­ly last week WASA an­nounced that cus­tomers in parts of Cen­tral Trinidad served by the Her­mitage Boost­er Sta­tion are cur­rent­ly with­out a pipe borne wa­ter sup­ply due to a de­fec­tive pump at the fa­cil­i­ty.

On­go­ing ex­ten­sive re­pair works were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed days lat­er.

Re­gard­ing com­mer­cial in­vest­ments in tanks and pumps John said busi­ness­es would in­clude such fix­tures any­way when con­struct­ing to en­sure re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

Checks with oth­er hard­ware re­vealed that from 600-gal­lon wa­ter tanks all the way up to 1,000-gal­lon ones, hard­ware own­ers have been see­ing a con­sis­tent flow of cus­tomers.

Doc’s Hard­ware in Diego Mar­tin said from last Sep­tem­ber it has no­ticed more peo­ple buy­ing more tanks.

So too has William H Scott which not­ed that more peo­ple have al­so been ask­ing about tanks and pumps with­in re­cent times.

Sales Man­ag­er of the Elec­tri­cal In­dus­tries Group (EIZ) Faiz Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny has seen a 12 per cent in­crease in sales from 2020 to 2021.

EIZ is a whole­saler and its pop­u­lar tanks have been the 1000 and the 400 gal­lons.

And for those homes that can­not af­ford suf­fi­cient tanks they have to re­ly on a truck born sup­ply from WASA which is free once the home­own­er is a reg­is­tered cus­tomer. If not reg­is­tered then $500 is nor­mal­ly the fee for tuck borne wa­ter from pri­vate sup­pli­ers.

And with price in­crease slapped on many goods, so too has the price of tanks in­creased.

Ac­cord­ing to John the raw ma­te­ri­als like the pel­lets have gone up on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, forc­ing an in­crease in the cost of wa­ter tanks.

WASA mak­ing strides -Min­is­ter

While Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­knowl­edged T&T has a wa­ter prob­lem he has as­sured that greater ef­fort is be­ing made to bring wa­ter to the peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those most in need.

He said projects be­ing rolled out by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and WASA over the last four months would show “se­ri­ous ef­forts be­ing made to im­prove wa­ter sup­ply across the coun­try as well as the tes­ti­mo­ni­als of so many cus­tomers who are now re­ceiv­ing wa­ter in their com­mu­ni­ty af­ter 20 and 30 years.”

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, some of these ini­tia­tives in­clude Pitch Road Boost­er Re­fur­bish­ment, Mor­vant (17,000) ben­e­fi­cia­ries, Low­er Mendez Dri­ve Boost­er (15,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Man­zanil­la Boost­er (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Guaico/Tamana Boost­er (500 ben­e­fi­cia­ries), Sub­adar Trace, Williamsville, Em­BD Sites (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries) Up­per Wharf Trace Boost­er (500 ben­e­fi­cia­ries) and Brazil San Raphael Boost­er (3,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries).

“We have had some cus­tomers not hav­ing wa­ter in some cas­es for 40 and 50 years and they are now get­ting wa­ter for the very first time and we will ac­cel­er­ate this mo­men­tum in 2022 and 2023.

“We do ac­knowl­edge we have a lot of ground to cov­er be­cause this wa­ter prob­lem has been plagu­ing this coun­try for far too long. There are some ar­eas which will con­tin­ue to strug­gle but we are work­ing to­wards it,” Gon­za­les main­tained.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that there’s a wa­ter deficit in the coun­try hence the rea­son for wa­ter sched­ul­ing.

“We have built a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ties un­der HDC and pri­vate de­vel­op­ments all over Trinidad and To­ba­go and what has not hap­pened over the years is in­vest­ments in im­prov­ing and fix­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter.

“That is the rea­son why you have wa­ter sched­ul­ing be­cause you have to share and re­dis­trib­ute wa­ter to all those new com­mu­ni­ties and hence the rea­son why some com­mu­ni­ties get wa­ter three days a week, four days a week, two days a week and in some in­stances one day a week be­cause you are try­ing to cut up the lim­it­ed re­sources you have,” Gon­za­les ex­plained.

So how will WASA im­prove its stock to meet the grow­ing de­mand?

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter in 2022 there will be a huge thrust to im­prove wa­ter pro­duc­tion by en­hanc­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of dams and reser­voirs and go­ing af­ter ground wa­ter sources, thus re­duc­ing wa­ter sched­ul­ing.

“There will be no need to re­dis­trib­ute and to sep­a­rate the lim­it­ed re­sources. If you bring more wa­ter in­to the grid it means more peo­ple will have 24/7 wa­ter at the same time,” Gon­za­les said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said pro­duc­tion has al­so in­creased at Ca­roni wa­ter treat­ment plant and at Hol­lis dam.

Fur­ther, Gon­za­les said the min­istry has be­gun col­lab­o­ra­tion with Her­itage where a num­ber of wa­ter wells from Petrotrin will be hand­ed over to WASA which will be re­fur­bished and be brought in­to op­er­a­tion to im­prove sup­ply to com­mu­ni­ties South-West Trinidad.

And ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter pur­chas­ing of tanks and pumps at this time of the year is nor­mal as cit­i­zens pre­pare for the dry sea­son.

“Even in ar­eas of 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply, cit­i­zens buy tanks as a back up mea­sure. In ar­eas of 24/4 sup­ply, cit­i­zens buy tanks to give them­selves piece of mind in the event of dis­rup­tions to their sup­ply,” he said.

But what is the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of wa­ter tanks? Is there a plas­tic re­cy­cling plan?

Gon­za­les said SWM­COL will be rolling out its re­cy­cling pro­gramme of which plas­tics will play a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored