WASA urges conservation as dry season transition strains North-West supply

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is re­as­sur­ing the pub­lic that it is proac­tive­ly man­ag­ing wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion as the coun­try tran­si­tions from the 2026 Dry Sea­son in­to the rainy pe­ri­od but urges cit­i­zens to adopt prac­ti­cal wa­ter con­ser­va­tion mea­sures.

Al­though the rainy sea­son was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared in May, WASA ex­plained that a two-month tran­si­tion is typ­i­cal be­fore sur­face wa­ter sources sta­bi­lize. This de­lay has left the North-West Re­gion par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble, with rain­fall lev­els falling be­low av­er­age.

Sur­face wa­ter fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Mar­aval Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant and sev­er­al small­er in­takes, have seen re­duced pro­duc­tion vol­umes. Ground­wa­ter sources al­so are un­der pres­sure, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 wells—among them Mo­ka, Paramin, El So­cor­ro, and San­ta Cruz—ex­pe­ri­enc­ing low­er aquifer recharge due to di­min­ished rain­fall.

WASA con­firmed that no fur­ther op­er­a­tional in­ter­ven­tions are pos­si­ble un­der cur­rent con­di­tions, stress­ing that re­cov­ery de­pends on con­sis­tent rain­fall.

De­spite these chal­lenges, WASA em­pha­sized that its teams are ac­tive­ly ro­tat­ing sup­ply to min­i­mize dis­rup­tion. Es­tab­lished Dry Sea­son sched­ules re­main in ef­fect, though the Au­thor­i­ty ac­knowl­edged an in­crease in “No Wa­ter” com­plaints from res­i­dents in the North-West. Dis­tri­b­u­tion crews con­tin­ue to man­age the sit­u­a­tion dai­ly, en­sur­ing that avail­able re­sources are shared as eq­ui­tably as pos­si­ble.

The Au­thor­i­ty un­der­scored that wa­ter con­ser­va­tion is a shared na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. It urged cit­i­zens to adopt prac­ti­cal mea­sures such as stor­ing wa­ter re­spon­si­bly dur­ing sched­uled sup­ply hours, avoid­ing hosepipe use for gar­den­ing or ve­hi­cle wash­ing, re­pair­ing leaks prompt­ly, and reusing wa­ter where pos­si­ble.

WASA not­ed that strain in one re­gion serves as a re­minder to the en­tire na­tion that wa­ter is a fi­nite re­source re­quir­ing care­ful man­age­ment.

WASA says as the rainy sea­son pro­gress­es, it re­mains con­fi­dent that sup­ply will nor­mal­ize once sus­tained rain­fall re­plen­ish­es both sur­face and ground­wa­ter sources. In the mean­time, the Au­thor­i­ty is call­ing on house­holds and busi­ness­es alike to prac­tice con­ser­va­tion, re­in­forc­ing that col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is key to weath­er­ing sea­son­al tran­si­tions.