Residents back desalination plant construction but urge short-term fixes

Rad­hi­ca De­Sil­va

Res­i­dents of far-flung com­mu­ni­ties in South Trinidad who have en­dured years of wa­ter short­ages are wel­com­ing plans for three new de­sali­na­tion plants, while urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to al­so tap in­to catch­ment ponds in low-ly­ing ar­eas as a short-term so­lu­tion.

In the Val­ley­line area of Bar­rack­pore, which falls with­in the Na­pari­ma con­stituen­cy, farmer Kha­lawan Ramkissoon said the projects are a step in the right di­rec­tion, but point­ed to the on­go­ing strug­gles res­i­dents face.

He said wa­ter sup­ply can be ir­reg­u­lar, some­times ar­riv­ing on­ly once every few weeks, forc­ing some res­i­dents to re­ly on ponds.

“Wa­ter is life. If you don’t have wa­ter, every­thing dies,” he said, adding that while he us­es pond wa­ter for farm­ing, many house­holds could al­so ben­e­fit if ponds were cleaned and main­tained to sup­ple­ment sup­ply.

In neigh­bour­ing Moru­ga, res­i­dent Shelford Tees­dale said while de­sali­na­tion of­fers long-term re­lief, au­thor­i­ties should con­sid­er har­ness­ing the area’s nat­ur­al wa­ter re­sources.

He said the re­gion is prone to flood­ing dur­ing the rainy sea­son and sug­gest­ed that ex­cess wa­ter could be stored in reser­voirs or catch­ment sys­tems and re­dis­trib­uted through pump­ing sta­tions to im­prove sup­ply.

“I feel the amount of rain we get in this area could sup­ply us,” he said, adding that im­prov­ing ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture could pro­vide quick­er re­lief while larg­er projects are be­ing de­vel­oped.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Nizam Baksh, a for­mer MP for Na­pari­ma, al­so sup­port­ed the de­sali­na­tion ini­tia­tive but stressed the need for a bal­anced ap­proach.

He said per­sis­tent dry-sea­son short­ages, cou­pled with grow­ing pop­u­la­tions and agri­cul­tur­al de­mand, con­tin­ue to strain sup­ply, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas de­pen­dent on the Navet Dam.

Baksh rec­om­mend­ed the con­struc­tion of dams up­stream along the Oropouche Riv­er, as well as re­ten­tion ponds, to store wa­ter and en­sure avail­abil­i­ty dur­ing pe­ri­ods of scarci­ty.

“It’s a very good idea, but you have to put those sys­tems in place so you have wa­ter when short­ages oc­cur,” he said.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing ahead with plans for three de­sali­na­tion plants, in­clud­ing one in Moru­ga/Table­land and an­oth­er in Ma­yaro, which are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents.

He said ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for the projects are ex­pect­ed to be is­sued short­ly, with work pro­gress­ing on fund­ing, lo­ca­tions and tech­ni­cal plan­ning.

Padarath said catch­ment ponds and re­ten­tion sys­tems are al­so be­ing ex­plored in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and oth­er agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly for un­der­served ar­eas such as Moru­ga/Table­land and Siparia.

“These are some things that we are cur­rent­ly look­ing at,” he said, adding that while de­sali­na­tion of­fers long-term re­lief, sup­ple­men­tary mea­sures could help ad­dress im­me­di­ate needs as com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to grap­ple with un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply.