Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

De­spite protests from Fyz­abad res­i­dents, the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion says no fur­ther ad­just­ments will be made to the ear­marked route of the 220-kilo­volt trans­mis­sion line which is un­der con­struc­tion from Union Vil­lage, La Brea, to Gand­hi Vil­lage, Debe.

The line is pass­ing through pri­vate prop­er­ties in Siparia Old Road, Fyz­abad and res­i­dents are in the process of fil­ing an in­junc­tion to stop it.

Res­i­dent Har­ri­lal Ram­per­sad said a meet­ing has been sched­uled with res­i­dents to dis­cuss their next step.

He said, “We are not go­ing to al­low T&TEC to build Tow­er 47 so close to our homes. We are not against the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment but we can­not al­low some­thing that will be in­ju­ri­ous to our health.”

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie said the res­i­dents are be­ing de­prived of the right to the en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, T&TEC, in re­sponse to res­i­dents’ protests, said it had start­ed the process of com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion since Ju­ly. T&TEC re­it­er­at­ed that it is pro­ceed­ing with the project in ac­cor­dance with the law.

The com­mis­sion de­nied that its trans­mis­sion tow­ers will be built on oc­cu­pied res­i­den­tial lands, but said over­head lines will pass through sev­er­al open parcels of land.

“The com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion process com­menced in Ju­ly, with the pub­li­ca­tion of the req­ui­site le­gal no­tice,” the com­mis­sion added.

Ex­plain­ing the im­por­tance of the project, T&TEC said the Union/Gand­hi 220kV cir­cuit, will serve as a sec­ondary back­up to take elec­tric­i­ty from the coun­try’s largest elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing com­pa­ny, Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) in La Brea, to T&TEC’s trans­mis­sion sub­sta­tion in Gand­hi Vil­lage, from where it will be dis­trib­uted across Trinidad. 

T&TEC said TGU pro­vides ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of Trinidad’s elec­tric­i­ty needs dur­ing day­light and 60 per cent at night. 

“The new cir­cuit is there­fore a crit­i­cal seg­ment of the elec­tric­i­ty grid and will al­low T&TEC and the coun­try ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for the re­li­able trans­mis­sion of elec­tric­i­ty.” In the event of emer­gency dam­age or fail­ure on the ex­ist­ing lines, T&TEC said the new cir­cuit will con­tin­ue to sup­ply elec­tric­i­ty to the coun­try, avoid­ing wide­spread out­ages. 

“The cir­cuit will re­duce the like­li­hood of na­tion­wide out­ages. On com­ple­tion, the Com­mis­sion will be able to trans­fer pow­er to the new cir­cuit to con­duct out­stand­ing main­te­nance work on the ex­ist­ing cir­cuit which is over 10 years old and, in its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, can­not be tak­en out of ser­vice for any sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of time to al­low pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance,” the Com­mis­sion added.

Over the past few months, T&TEC of­fi­cials had sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions with the af­fect­ed res­i­dents and re­con­sid­ered the route for one seg­ment cross­ing Siparia Old Road. 

“Based on the en­gi­neer­ing as­sess­ments, some ad­just­ments were made to the phys­i­cal de­sign and no fur­ther al­ter­ations are fea­si­ble at this point. The pro­posed path for the en­tire new Union/ Gand­hi 220kV cir­cuit mir­rors the ex­ist­ing cir­cuit from Union to Gand­hi,” the com­mis­sion added.