As De­sal­cott’s wa­ter pro­duc­tion halt­ed yes­ter­day as it un­der­goes 16-day sched­uled main­te­nance to pre­pare for next year’s dry sea­son, some 500,000 res­i­dents of south and cen­tral Trinidad will now have to find oth­er means of procur­ing a sup­ply.

How­ev­er, for res­i­dents of Ten­ant Branch Trace #1 in Wood­land, the shut­down has added to an al­ready volatile wa­ter is­sue over 20 years in the mak­ing.

The res­i­dents said the ir­reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter to the area has pre­vent­ed them from fill­ing their tanks to take them through the shut­down pe­ri­od.

The road me­an­ders through the rur­al hill­side in south Trinidad, which for res­i­dents is the main con­trib­u­tor to their in­suf­fi­cient and ir­reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter. They said the in­cline hin­ders the flow of wa­ter from reach­ing them.

Coun­cil­lor for the area, Dood­nath Mayhroo blamed an in­ef­fec­tive Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) boost­er sta­tion and in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture.

“The boost­er sta­tion in Thick Vil­lage needs to be re­paired and the lines need to be changed. They (WASA) can­not raise the pres­sure to reach the peo­ple on the hill here. These peo­ple have prob­lems every sin­gle day. They on a sched­ule and if they do not get on that sched­uled date then they have missed it and go to the next week,” Mayhroo said.

Asked if the cor­po­ra­tion would be im­ple­ment­ing any mea­sures to as­sist the res­i­dents, coun­cil­lor Mayhroo said, “The amount of trucks we have, we are un­able to ad­e­quate­ly sup­ply every sin­gle house­hold with a truck bourne sup­ply of wa­ter. Our trucks are main­ly re­al­ly to sup­ply like church­es, tem­ples, schools and if there’s an emer­gency some­where.”

A res­i­dent of the area for the past 25 years, In­grid Sookdeo said she has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the prob­lem since she moved to the area.

“We al­ways have to call WASA...we used to get truck bourne long ago (but) not any­more. Some­times three weeks, four weeks we have to be call­ing,” she said

But when the area would re­ceive a wa­ter sup­ply, she said, it was not enough to fill her wa­ter tanks. The shut­down of the plant now ex­as­per­ates her con­cerns.

“We didn’t get any to full (or) save then. We didn’t get any wa­ter for the past two weeks so every­thing is al­most emp­ty. How we go sur­vive?”

To cope with the in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply, she and oth­er res­i­dents have af­fixed pipes from their rain spouts to their tanks.

Bebe De­op­er­sad, 84, lives alone fur­ther down the road and won’t be able to move any wa­ter catch­ment de­vices to per­form her dai­ly rou­tines.

Since the an­nounce­ment of the shut­down, WASA has stat­ed they would be putting mea­sures in place to pro­vide wa­ter to ar­eas af­fect­ed by in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion and re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of sup­ply from the Ca­roni and Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants, im­ple­ment­ing tem­po­rary sup­ply sched­ules, en­sur­ing ca­pac­i­ty stor­age at crit­i­cal ser­vice reser­voirs, in­creas­ing wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty, and plac­ing spe­cial em­pha­sis and arrange­ments to sup­ply schools, health in­sti­tu­tions, homes for aged and oth­er spe­cial needs or­gan­i­sa­tions.