Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Fol­low­ing weeks of wa­ter sup­ply dis­rup­tions across sev­er­al parts of To­ba­go, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has said that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) must fix the is­land’s on­go­ing wa­ter cri­sis. Au­gus­tine said he hoped some re­lief would come af­ter a planned meet­ing with WASA ex­ec­u­tives to­mor­row.

“We are sup­posed to be in the rainy sea­son and if we’re hav­ing prob­lems, es­pe­cial­ly in the west­ern, south­west­ern parts of the is­land now, God alone knows what will hap­pen for the dry sea­son. So, we are look­ing at so­lu­tions to that this week,” Au­gus­tine said dur­ing a vir­tu­al brief­ing yes­ter­day.

He warned that west­ern and south­west­ern com­mu­ni­ties re­mained par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble and stressed that his of­fice was close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

“We are look­ing at so­lu­tions to that this week,” he said.

He added that so­lu­tions were be­ing looked at to en­sure there was an im­proved wa­ter sup­ply to af­fect­ed ar­eas as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

This comes af­ter a re­cent sup­ply dis­rup­tion in Crown Point and sur­round­ing ar­eas, caused by a rup­tured 16-inch trans­mis­sion pipeline near the Tri­an­gle Woods Well.

It was re­paired last Wednes­day.

WASA in a state­ment said the wa­ter sup­ply had al­so been af­fect­ed by re­duced pro­duc­tion at the Cour­land Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant due to un­sea­son­al low riv­er flows.

Au­gus­tine said his of­fice was work­ing along­side WASA and us­ing all avail­able re­sources to main­tain ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly to res­i­dents in rur­al ar­eas.

Ear­li­er this year, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said that the gov­ern­ment had spent $127 mil­lion over the years to im­prove To­ba­go’s wa­ter sup­ply.

This in­clud­ed the $50 mil­lion Golds­bor­ough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, set to de­liv­er up to two mil­lion gal­lons dai­ly to 17,000 res­i­dents, main­ly in the is­land’s east. An ad­di­tion­al $54 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for oth­er projects to boost re­li­a­bil­i­ty.