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WITH less rainfall than usual due in April and May, people should use water carefully even as WASA restricts the public from hose-pipe use and car-washing, urged WASA chairman Ravindra Nanga on Thursday at a briefing at the Ministry of Public Utilities in St Clair.
Meteorologist Gary Benjamin told the briefing of low rainfall already this year in Trinidad, namely 68 per cent of its usual rainfall for January, 55 per cent for February and just 16 per cent for March. He said April-June have a 70 per cent chance of dryness, with day and night temperatures slightly above average.
Nanga said with the expected shortfall WASA would reduce its supply schedule to areas enjoying a 24/7 and 24/5 supply, to serve less well-supplied areas.
Areas on a rotational supply would not have their supply reduced, he assured.
Saying WASA had faced worse situations, he said this was not a crisis, adding, "We are in a pretty good situation."
Nanga said WASA would utilise ground water rather than surface water. He boasted WASA had fixed a backlog of 5,000 leaks and now had 1,000 fresh leaks.
WASA CEO Kelvin Romain said climate change had reduced WASA's capacity by increasing evaporation from reservoirs and increased user demand.
He said WASA has achieved metering of 50 per cent of its entire transmission network to better monitor its supply including leaks.
WASA operations director Shaira Ali said WASA had so far been able to maintain its usual supply to customers amid near normal conditions, citing healthy current reservoir levels of 77 per cent at Arena (compared to 73 per cent long term), 47 per cent at Hollis (compared to 62 per cent), 58 per cent at Navet (compared to 69 per cent) and 76 per cent at Hillsborough (compared to 72 per cent.) Ali promised to publicise those areas due to face a curtailed water-supply.
She said WASA will maintain its vigorous backlog repair programme, with significant reduction in leaks within the next 1-2 months towards a 12-24 hour repair time.
However she said WASA facilities fed by surface water such as springs, rivers and reservoirs could see a 35 per cent drop in their water production in April to May.
She cited plants as Hollis, Navet, Caroni, Caura, facilities at Maracas/St Joseph, and Tobago-based plants at Charlotteville, Courland, Speyside and Hillsboro West.
Ali said WASA was seeking new water sources in areas such as the Trinidad north coast, central Trinidad, Mayaro, Sangre Grande, Santa Cruz and Diego Martin, to bring localised supplies to residents. WASA has rehabilitated 23 wells to boost its capacity by two million gallons, while maintaining its booster stations and water treatment facilities. Water trucks will be used strategically, she added, while urging the population towards good water conservation habits.
In the question session, Nanga said a 30 per cent reservoir level would be deemed critical.
Asked about metering, Romain said this was not for private customers but rather was done along WASA's major transmission system. Nanga said this had begun at North Oropouche and had detected a leak at O'Meara. Compared to WASA previously losing 50 per cent of its treated water during transmission, he reckoned that figure was now just 30 per cent and said he'd like it to be at 25 per cent. Towards this end, WASA was using smart valves to control water flow in its transmission system, to as to reduce the chance of water hammering such as which had blew out a section of pipe at Peake's in Cocorite. Nanga said WASA has a dashboard that helps to monitor leaks in real time and so reduce them. He promised to soon launch a new app whereby members of the public could report leaks such as by taking a photo and geo-linking it to WASA, report outages in supply, or request truck-borne water. With leaks comprising 30 per cent of WASA's non-revenue water which is 43 per cent of production, he said other sources of loss were things like illegal connections.
Nanga said WASA's management had found that certain areas had been properly connected to an available water supply but had not got water because the valves had not been turned on. Pressed if this was due to malfeasance, he said, "Again, with the problems we were facing at WASA, I do not want to judge at this point in time, but you draw the conclusion. An area that should have been on supply out of supply up to ten days. When you get the report and you investigate, absolutely nothing was wrong. No booster stations were down, no leaks, nothing.
"All that occurred was the valve was opened and the supply was restored. You draw the conclusion.
"I draw my own conclusions but because of where I sit I don't want to say what those conclusions are."
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