Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

As Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ters what should be its sea­son of re­lief from months of heat and dry weath­er, the coun­try is in­stead con­fronting a trou­bling re­al­i­ty—the rains have of­fi­cial­ly ar­rived, but for many com­mu­ni­ties, the wa­ter still has not.

From Ari­ma to San­gre Grande, res­i­dents in parts of North-East Trinidad are be­ing urged to con­serve wa­ter af­ter the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) con­firmed re­duced pro­duc­tion at two ma­jor treat­ment plants be­cause of crit­i­cal­ly low riv­er lev­els.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, WASA said pro­longed dry sea­son con­di­tions have forced cut­backs at the North Oropouche and Quare Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants, af­fect­ing sup­ply to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties across the re­gion.

But Trinidad’s wa­ter chal­lenges are not un­fold­ing in iso­la­tion.

Across the Caribbean, drought con­di­tions are tight­en­ing their grip on re­gion­al wa­ter sup­plies.

In St Vin­cent, the Cen­tral Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has in­tro­duced al­ter­nat­ing day­time and night­time ra­tioning across large sec­tions of the is­land as dwin­dling riv­er flows deep­en the drought.

In the Grenadines, where there are no rivers or mu­nic­i­pal wa­ter sys­tems, fer­ries are now be­ing used to trans­port emer­gency wa­ter to com­mu­ni­ties whose cis­terns have run dry.

Re­gion­al cli­mate da­ta sug­gest the pres­sure may con­tin­ue.

The lat­est Caribbean Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum (Cari­COF) drought bul­letin warns that long-term drought is evolv­ing in St Vin­cent and sev­er­al East­ern Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, while Grena­da faces a po­ten­tial drought emer­gency.

The re­gion­al body has urged gov­ern­ments, util­i­ties and house­holds across the Caribbean to con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing con­di­tions and con­serv­ing wa­ter.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is among the 27 ter­ri­to­ries mon­i­tored un­der the re­gion­al drought sys­tem.

In Trinidad, me­te­o­rol­o­gists say the is­sue is not that the wet sea­son has failed to ar­rive, but that it has ar­rived slow­ly.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, act­ing chief cli­ma­tol­o­gist Kaidar Kissoon said rel­a­tive­ly dry air east of Trinidad and To­ba­go, com­bined with weak ear­ly-sea­son trop­i­cal waves, has lim­it­ed the mois­ture need­ed for wide­spread rain­fall.

“The slow start of the wet sea­son has not pro­duced sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall at this time due to rel­a­tive­ly dry air aloft,” Kissoon said.

He added that stronger rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pect­ed lat­er in the sea­son when trop­i­cal waves align more close­ly with the is­land’s lat­i­tude.

Weath­er da­ta help ex­plain why rivers have strug­gled to re­cov­er.

In Trinidad, rain­fall was be­low nor­mal in both Feb­ru­ary and March, with on­ly about two-thirds of the usu­al rain­fall record­ed be­fore show­ers in­creased in April.

To­ba­go saw an even sharp­er de­cline, with rain­fall drop­ping from near-nor­mal lev­els in Feb­ru­ary to less than half of what is usu­al­ly ex­pect­ed by April.

While Kissoon said “some lev­el of re­lief is ex­pect­ed” be­tween May and Ju­ly, the lat­est cli­mate mod­el da­ta sug­gests North-East Trinidad may re­ceive on­ly 75 per cent to 90 per cent of nor­mal rain­fall dur­ing May.

For house­holds al­ready fill­ing tanks, stor­ing buck­ets and watch­ing the pres­sure drop, the mes­sage from both me­te­o­rol­o­gists and wa­ter au­thor­i­ties is in­creas­ing­ly re­gion­al and ur­gent – con­ser­va­tion mea­sures re­main crit­i­cal as the coun­try waits for rivers and reser­voirs to re­cov­er.