JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has an­nounced that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has been grant­ed a one-year mora­to­ri­um by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), tem­porar­i­ly avoid­ing a po­ten­tial $35 mil­lion an­nu­al fine for non-com­pli­ance at the Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant.

The mora­to­ri­um of­fers WASA a crit­i­cal win­dow to bring the age­ing fa­cil­i­ty up to en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards and avoid cost­ly penal­ties that had loomed over the Au­thor­i­ty due to per­sis­tent ef­flu­ent dis­charge vi­o­la­tions.

Padarath made the com­ment on Sat­ur­day dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions aris­ing out of the loom­ing fines re­lat­ing to the plant's ef­flu­ent is­sues.

"We have been able to stave off the 35 mil­lion dol­lar fine. we re­ceived a mora­to­ri­um for one year to come with­in com­pli­ance. This was a mat­ter that was left to lan­guish for about 5 - 7 years by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, and in light of that, we are tak­ing im­me­di­ate steps to have the mat­ter ad­dressed."

Dur­ing a re­cent tour led by Act­ing CEO Jee­van Joseph, Act­ing Di­rec­tor of Waste­water Ser­vices Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh dis­closed that the plant, com­mis­sioned in 2004, has sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, with an es­ti­mat­ed $175 mil­lion in re­fur­bish­ments need­ed to meet en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards.

Ne­glect­ed main­te­nance be­tween 2015 and 2025 has led to mul­ti­ple process fail­ures, in­creas­ing the risk of harm­ful ef­flu­ent dis­charges.

The Beetham fa­cil­i­ty, one of the coun­try's largest, serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 182,500 res­i­dents, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Port of Spain, Diego Mar­tin, St. Ann’s, and Mar­aval.

In re­sponse to the cri­sis, WASA has cre­at­ed a new waste­water di­rec­torate to ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal and pub­lic health con­cerns and to re­duce ex­po­sure to fu­ture penal­ties.

Over the years, res­i­dents lodged com­plaints about sewage over­flow to for­mer Laven­tille West MP, Fitzger­ald Hinds, and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Gon­za­les had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that re­pair works were con­duct­ed on rup­tured sew­er lines.

Min­is­ter Padarath said ur­gent steps were be­ing tak­en to safe­guard res­i­dents from the im­pact of ef­flu­ent dis­charge.

"I do rec­og­nize the chal­lenge it pos­es to the res­i­dents of Beetham and there­fore I have asked the act­ing CEO and board of WASA to move ex­pe­di­tious­ly to en­sure we mit­i­gate any ef­fects it may have on those in the area."

When con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day by Guardian Me­dia, Gon­za­les point­ed to what he de­scribed as a “mas­sive Beetham waste­water scan­dal” un­der a for­mer UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, al­leg­ing that $1 bil­lion ear­marked for the project was lost in cor­rup­tion.

"When the ad­min­is­tra­tion of WASA can put out such a re­lease for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es or to score cheap po­lit­i­cal points, then you know what we are deal­ing with, a bunch of jok­ers,” Gon­za­les said.

He fur­ther chal­lenged Padarath to ex­plain how the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in­tends to fi­nance main­te­nance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work with­out a re­form strat­e­gy or in­creased tar­iffs.

"He must now tell the coun­try where they are go­ing to find the mon­ey to in­crease WASA’s sub­sidy so that it can un­der­take all main­te­nance of plants around the coun­try.”

Call­ing the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive “hand­picked” and “in­com­pe­tent,” Gon­za­les urged the ad­min­is­tra­tion to stop “ha­rass­ing the psy­che of the na­tion” with po­lit­i­cal­ly charged re­leas­es and fo­cus on solv­ing the prob­lems at hand.