WASA urges water conservation as dry weather strains supply

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has ap­pealed to res­i­dents in sev­er­al North-East com­mu­ni­ties to con­serve wa­ter as on­go­ing dry weath­er con­tin­ues to re­duce pro­duc­tion at the North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

In a state­ment is­sued Tues­day, WASA said wa­ter pro­duc­tion at the fa­cil­i­ty has fall­en from 20 mil­lion gal­lons per day to 16 mil­lion gal­lons per day be­cause of pro­longed dry con­di­tions, re­sult­ing in dis­rup­tions to wa­ter sup­ply in mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties.

Ar­eas af­fect­ed in­clude Five Rivers, Arou­ca, Mal­oney, Ari­ma, Brazil, La Hor­quet­ta, Tumpuna, San­gre Grande, Guaico/Tamana, Nar­i­va and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la.

The Au­thor­i­ty ac­knowl­edged the grow­ing num­ber of com­plaints from res­i­dents re­port­ing lit­tle or no pipe-borne wa­ter and ex­pressed sym­pa­thy to house­holds and busi­ness­es ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.

WASA said dis­tri­b­u­tion teams have been work­ing to man­age the lim­it­ed sup­ply as fair­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble by ro­tat­ing wa­ter ser­vice to af­fect­ed ar­eas dur­ing sched­uled sup­ply pe­ri­ods.

The Au­thor­i­ty not­ed that op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments have al­ready been im­ple­ment­ed to lessen the im­pact of the re­duced pro­duc­tion, but warned that a full re­turn to nor­mal ser­vice would de­pend heav­i­ly on sus­tained rain­fall.

Of­fi­cials said the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored and promised to pro­vide up­dates as con­di­tions change.

The lat­est dis­rup­tion comes as sev­er­al parts of Trinidad con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence dry weath­er con­di­tions, plac­ing ad­di­tion­al strain on wa­ter pro­duc­tion sys­tems and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works.

Res­i­dents have been en­cour­aged to mon­i­tor WASA’s of­fi­cial web­site and so­cial me­dia pages for re­vised sup­ply sched­ules and up­dates on af­fect­ed ar­eas.

The Au­thor­i­ty al­so re­newed its call for re­spon­si­ble wa­ter use dur­ing the short­age.

WASA ad­vised cus­tomers to re­pair leak­ing pipes and fix­tures, avoid un­nec­es­sary wa­ter use and store wa­ter care­ful­ly dur­ing sched­uled sup­ply pe­ri­ods.

The Au­thor­i­ty thanked the pub­lic for its pa­tience and co­op­er­a­tion while crews con­tin­ue ef­forts to man­age the re­duced sup­ply lev­els.

Com­mu­ni­ties in east­ern Trinidad have faced re­cur­ring wa­ter sup­ply dis­rup­tions dur­ing ex­tend­ed dry pe­ri­ods in re­cent years, with res­i­dents fre­quent­ly rais­ing con­cerns over in­con­sis­tent pipe-borne wa­ter ac­cess and re­liance on truck-borne de­liv­er­ies.

WASA said it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing along­side af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties un­til con­di­tions im­prove and wa­ter pro­duc­tion lev­els re­cov­er.