The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has con­firmed that it will be­gin work soon on the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (WTP), in or­der to im­prove the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of wa­ter sup­ply to cus­tomers in Cen­tral Trinidad served by that op­er­a­tion.

In its lat­est ad­vi­so­ry, WASA ad­mits that it has had a chal­lenge with main­tain­ing a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply to cus­tomers served by the Freeport Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (WTP). 

The Au­thor­i­ty ex­plains this is due pri­mar­i­ly to the re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tion from two wells at the fa­cil­i­ty, with the most re­cent oc­cur­ring in Sep­tem­ber 2020, and which has im­pact­ed the pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty at the Freeport WTP.

“The two wells in ques­tion re­quire re-drilling and ex­ten­sive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works re­spec­tive­ly,” WASA notes.  “The Au­thor­i­ty has iden­ti­fied works re­quired to im­prove the reg­u­lar­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of sup­ply to these and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and will be im­ple­ment­ing same.”

The ad­vi­so­ry re­ports that WASA had been: “uti­liz­ing wa­ter from the Au­thor­i­ty’s Ca­roni WTP to sup­ple­ment the sup­ply to af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties”, which was im­pact­ed when main­te­nance works be­came nec­es­sary at both the Ca­roni WTP and the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant.

“Those would have ex­ac­er­bat­ed the al­ready del­i­cate sup­ply sit­u­a­tion.  Both fa­cil­i­ties have since re­turned to full ser­vice and the Au­thor­i­ty is work­ing to pro­vide the most eq­ui­table sup­ply to the area by main­tain­ing the ex­ist­ing wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules,” WASA states.

WASA says it will be li­ais­ing with the re­spec­tive par­lia­men­tary and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing the course of this re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion project.