SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Main­te­nance work on the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, which was com­plet­ed 90 min­utes ahead of sched­ule yes­ter­day, cost the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) $5 mil­lion.

The fig­ure was by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who said: “This was a ma­jor achieve­ment for WASA know­ing that we fin­ished ahead of time.”

Gon­za­les ad­mit­ted he bare­ly got any sleep be­cause he want­ed to en­sure every­thing was done ac­cord­ing to plan. He said WASA was faced with chal­lenges due to the weath­er.

At mid­day on Fri­day, the sup­ply of wa­ter to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500,000 cus­tomers was dis­rupt­ed as the Ca­roni plant had to be pow­ered down for re­pairs. WASA had ad­vised af­fect­ed cus­tomers that the planned three-day shut­down was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed yes­ter­day.

The works un­der­tak­en were up­grades, re­gion­al main­te­nance and re­pairs on 23 projects. There were re­place­ments to valves, pumps, trans­mis­sions and trans­form­ers.

The re­pairs were due to be com­plet­ed by noon yes­ter­day but Gon­za­les said by 10.30 am WASA had wrapped up the 23 projects. South’s trans­mis­sion line was back in full ser­vice at 8 am while work on the north trans­mis­sion was com­plet­ed by 10.30 am “mark­ing the end of the main­te­nance project.”

Gon­za­les thanked the 30 crews who worked around the clock along with WASA deputy chair­man Al­ston Fournil­li­er and se­nior ex­ec­u­tives.

He said dur­ing the shut­down there wasn’t an in­crease in calls for a truck-borne sup­ply.

“What that demon­strat­ed was that the pop­u­la­tion put the nec­es­sary mea­sures in place. In that re­gard, I want to thank cit­i­zens for tak­ing the planned shut­down se­ri­ous­ly and al­low­ing WASA to do their job,” the min­is­ter said.

With the plant back on the track, some com­mu­ni­ties be­gan re­ceiv­ing pipe-borne wa­ter right away. How­ev­er, cus­tomers in the fur­thest ar­eas might ex­pe­ri­ence longer de­lays be­fore their ser­vice is re­stored.

“It may take be­tween 24 to 48 hours for their sup­ply to be re­turned. What we have done is keep WASA’s call cen­tre in emer­gency gear and our trucks on stand­by should peo­ple need wa­ter in the next two days. We stand ready to as­sist,” Gon­za­les said, adding that this was the biggest WASA project to be un­der­tak­en dur­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al tenure.

“It was to en­gage in ac­tive main­te­nance work to re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of un­planned shut­down. The main pur­pose of the shut­down was to in­stall sev­er­al me­tres at our ma­jor trans­mis­sion dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. This would as­sist the Au­thor­i­ty to mea­sure in re­al time the vol­umes of wa­ter go­ing in­to par­tic­u­lar ar­eas so WASA can know when in­ter­ven­tions are need­ed based on flows, pres­sures and vol­umes of wa­ter,” he ex­plained.

The over­all ob­jec­tive was to im­prove the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the plant.

Gon­za­les said a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of the project was fund­ed by an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion grant which WASA re­ceived two years ago.

“That grant was to the tune of US$800,000 to in­stall tele­met­ric de­vices on our trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem,” he said.

He said the IDB recog­nised that WASA had not been mea­sur­ing the vol­umes of wa­ter it sup­plies to cus­tomers.