Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

With 80 per cent of the planned up­grades at the Ca­roni Wa­ter treat­ment plant com­plet­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les says wa­ter would have been re­stored for some cus­tomers in the South be­tween last night and this morn­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at one of the sev­en in­stal­la­tion sites, Gon­za­les said the round-the-clock work was so ad­vanced that he pro­ject­ed South cus­tomers would have a re­turn of wa­ter ahead of sched­ule. 

He said the week­end’s work was part of an on­go­ing up­grade of the mon­i­tor­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter, mov­ing from ap­prox­i­mat­ed us­age to dig­i­tal, re­al-time in­for­ma­tion. 

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty said sev­er­al key jobs were com­plet­ed, which in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a new trans­former at the in­take of the Ca­roni Plant, as well as the in­stal­la­tion of valves and me­ters at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions along the North and South trans­mis­sion/dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. 

The re­lease added that in­clement weath­er caused a de­lay in in­stalling a new bulk me­ter at the El So­cor­ro Boost­er Sta­tion. 

At a me­dia con­fer­ence last week, WASA act­ing Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Shaira Ali said the tem­po­rary shut-down of the Ca­roni plant from Au­gust 9 to 11 would af­fect res­i­dents in the north, cen­tral and south­ern parts of Trinidad. 

Some ar­eas in­clud­ed Co­corite, Cas­cade, Port-of-Spain, Mor­vant, Barataria, San Juan, St Au­gus­tine, Ch­agua­nas, Pe­nal and Fyz­abad. 

Wa­ter is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the af­fect­ed ar­eas by noon to­day, or soon­er. 

The up­grade, which saw the Ca­roni plant be­ing shut down, is part of a wa­ter au­dit, Gon­za­les said, which is part of an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) US$800,000 tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion grant. 

Gon­za­les added that the tech­ni­cal up­grade was part of the qual­i­fy­ing arrange­ment of a US$180 mil­lion loan. 

With the in­stal­la­tion of the me­ters, Gon­za­les said, WASA can de­tect leaks be­fore they be­come a prob­lem post­ed on so­cial me­dia. 

“With this, we can mea­sure the flows of wa­ter, mea­sure pres­sures, iden­ti­fy when you have drops in pres­sures, and iden­ti­fy when you have leaks on your sys­tem that may not be vis­i­ble to the eyes but can be iden­ti­fied when you see a drop in pres­sures or drop in flows.” 

 Gon­za­les added, “One of the things that the in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts recog­nise is that WASA has op­er­at­ed for far too long with­out da­ta and in­for­ma­tion. We have an av­er­age of the amount of wa­ter that is pro­duced on a dai­ly ba­sis. We have an idea of the con­sump­tion pat­terns of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, but these things are not mea­sured be­cause of the ab­sence of au­toma­tion and bulk me­ter­ing.”