The Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) says from Fri­day cit­i­zens can check its web­site and so­cial me­dia ac­counts to find out when they will get wa­ter sup­ply in their pipes.

This comes af­ter re­ports have sur­faced from South, Cen­tral and East Trinidad of dry taps and dis­coloured wa­ter com­ing from taps as the pub­lic tries to heed warn­ings to wash their hands and prop­er­ly sani­tise their homes in light of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In re­sponse to ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia, WASA’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Daniel Plen­ty said the au­thor­i­ty is tak­ing steps to ad­dress the wa­ter is­sues.

The re­lease said WASA was re­dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter from un­af­fect­ed ar­eas with high pres­sure to wa­ter-stressed ar­eas on the pe­riph­ery of the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

“The use of wa­ter from the au­thor­i­ty's four main im­pound­ing reser­voirs i.e. Are­na, Navet, Hol­lis and Hills­bor­ough, is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored and man­aged to en­sure max­i­mum wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty and pro­duc­tion at this time. Mea­sures have been tak­en to en­sure op­ti­mum wa­ter pro­duc­tion from ground­wa­ter sources, by close­ly mon­i­tor­ing and ser­vic­ing ex­ist­ing wells equip­ment,” the re­lease stat­ed.

But dry sea­son con­di­tions have been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing on wa­ter pro­duc­tion.

“This as the coun­try con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence be­low nor­mal rain­fall for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary 2020 as fol­lows: Navet  25.8 per cent and Hol­lis – 14.7 per cent while rain­fall at Are­na, North Oropouche and Hills­bor­ough were mar­gin­al­ly be­low nor­mal for the same pe­ri­od.

Based on pro­jec­tions of rain­fall by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice and the need for potable wa­ter to counter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the au­thor­i­ty has none the less in­creased its re­leas­es from its ma­jor im­pound­ing reser­voirs by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 mil­lion gal­lons dai­ly,” the re­lease said.

With pro­duc­tion ramped up, WASA has as­sured cus­tomers that mea­sures are in place to en­sure a sus­tain­able sup­ply dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Wa­ter-use re­stric­tions re­main in place and cus­tomers are be­ing urged to man­age their wa­ter wise­ly.

With so­cial dis­tanc­ing in place, WASA has ad­vised cus­tomers that it has lim­it­ed ser­vices at its cus­tomer busi­ness cen­tres, call cen­tre and new ser­vices de­part­ment.

Cus­tomers can avoid go­ing in­to those cen­tres by pay­ing their bills, re­quest truck-borne sup­plies and re­port leaks by in­stead go­ing on­line at www.wasa.gov.tt or us­ing the WASA Ser­vices App avail­able on the Ap­ple and Google Play Stores.