Water Woes for Half-a-Million as Desal Plant Shuts Down

MORE than 500,000 people in South and Cen­tral Trinidad will be im­pact­ed by a short­age of pipe-borne from September 30 when the De­sali­na­tion plant goes down for maintenance.

The plant will come back up on October 16.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held at De­sal­cott in Point Lisas on Thurs­day, its gen­er­al man­ag­er John Thomp­son said, “From Sep­tem­ber 30 we will be ramp­ing down and we have ex­ten­sive main­te­nance to do to en­sure the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the plant for next year’s dry sea­son.

“As usu­al, we will be do­ing ex­ten­sive elec­tri­cal work through­out the plant, in­frared and ul­tra­son­ic sur­veys. We will al­so be do­ing a ma­jor job on stor­age tanks through which all the wa­ter flows be­fore be­ing sent to WASA.”

The affected areas include Ca­roni, St He­le­na, Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas, Cunu­pia, Cara­pichaima, Cou­va, Clax­ton Bay, Mara­bel­la, Gas­par­il­lo, San Fer­nan­do, Co­coyea, Union Hall, La Ro­maine, Wood­land, Palmiste, Phillip­ine, Ram­bert Vil­lage, South Oropouche, Fyz­abad, Av­o­cat, Siparia, Pe­nal, San Fran­cique, Rousil­lac, Aripero and La Brea.

WASA’s Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Al­lan Poon King ad­vised cit­i­zens to stock up on drink­ing wa­ter.

He said, “Store what you can re­ceive from WASA be­fore and dur­ing. Our sched­ules will be amend­ed and will be pub­lished on the WASA web­site and Face­book page and Twit­ter.”

Poon King noted that the hosepipe ban in­sti­tut­ed by WASA in Jan­u­ary 2019 remains in ef­fect.

Poon King said De­sal­cott pro­vides 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter daily to WASA.

He said in order to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of the sup­ply short­fall on its op­er­a­tions, Poon King said WASA will be in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion and re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wa­ter sup­plies from the Ca­roni and Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

“Navet is op­er­at­ing at 50 percent of its ca­pac­i­ty and Ca­roni will be put at op­ti­mum lev­el as well to en­sure we can sup­ply and meet the sched­ules,” Poon King said.

He said Trop­i­cal Storm Karen did help the level at the reser­voirs.

Poon King said, “In terms of vol­umes, Ar­ena which sup­ports the Ca­roni plant rose .5 feet equiv­a­lent to 250 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter, Hol­lis rose by three feet and Navet rose by one foot, equiv­a­lent to 100 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter.”