WASA customers complain of discoloured water, supply issues

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian

Res­i­dents in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties have com­plained of dis­coloured wa­ter and sup­ply prob­lems in re­cent days.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived com­plaints from res­i­dents in San­ta Cruz, Mt Hope and St James.

Yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said it was flush­ing af­fect­ed ar­eas to clear tem­po­rary dis­coloura­tion fol­low­ing a sched­uled main­te­nance shut­down at the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott).

WASA said tem­po­rary ad­just­ments were made to the wa­ter trans­mis­sion sys­tem dur­ing the shut­down. As the sys­tem was brought back and wa­ter pres­sure was re­stored, some cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enced dis­coloured wa­ter.

How­ev­er, the au­thor­i­ty as­sured cus­tomers that the wa­ter re­mained safe for do­mes­tic use. It ad­vised those ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dis­coloura­tion to run their taps for a few min­utes to flush their in­ter­nal plumb­ing sys­tems and apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience.

Mean­while, some WASA cus­tomers are fac­ing a longer wait for wa­ter af­ter the full restart of De­sal­cott’s de­sali­na­tion plant was de­layed un­til Thurs­day. Res­i­dents have com­plained that wa­ter has not reached their taps even on sched­uled sup­ply days.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said yes­ter­day that De­sal­cott, which was due to re­sume full op­er­a­tions on Sun­day af­ter its an­nu­al main­te­nance shut­down, en­coun­tered me­chan­i­cal prob­lems. He said WASA’s act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer had told him the plant was now ex­pect­ed to re­sume full op­er­a­tions by Thurs­day.

“I spoke with the act­ing CEO of WASA on my way here this morn­ing. He ad­vised me that to­day is Tues­day and that, by the lat­est, De­sal­cott is ex­pect­ed to re­sume op­er­a­tions on Thurs­day,” Padarath said.

WASA had ad­vised cus­tomers that De­sal­cott’s an­nu­al main­te­nance shut­down would run from Sep­tem­ber 28 to Oc­to­ber 4. The Point Lisas plant sup­plies WASA with about 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly, sup­ports the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and aug­ments sup­plies to parts of cen­tral and south-west Trinidad.

WASA had said wa­ter de­liv­er­ies were ex­pect­ed to re­sume from noon on Oc­to­ber 4, with the full con­tract­ed sup­ply ex­pect­ed with­in 24 to 48 hours of that restart.

Padarath said the an­nu­al main­te­nance was planned, but De­sal­cott en­coun­tered prob­lems dur­ing the work.

“They had some un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances,” he said. “This is an an­nu­al main­te­nance ex­er­cise. We usu­al­ly try to get the work done be­fore the hec­tic pe­ri­ods of Di­vali, Christ­mas, etc. They had some me­chan­i­cal is­sues at their fa­cil­i­ty, which cre­at­ed de­lays, but they have as­sured us that we will be back up, look­ing at Thurs­day of this week.”

The de­lay has added pres­sure to a wa­ter sys­tem al­ready fac­ing pro­duc­tion con­straints.

Padarath said heavy rain­fall had al­so in­creased the amount of sludge in reser­voirs sup­ply­ing the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, re­quir­ing de­silt­ing work that was al­most com­plete.

He al­so said all of WASA’s dams were be­low 70 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, with some in the 50s.

“Those dam lev­els have cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for us be­cause it is not an is­sue of dis­tri­b­u­tion; it is an is­sue of pro­duc­tion,” he said.

WASA is try­ing to off­set re­duced pro­duc­tion by bring­ing in ad­di­tion­al wa­ter from De­sal­cott, wells and oth­er sources. How­ev­er, some res­i­dents have com­plained that they re­ceived no pipe-borne wa­ter de­spite their com­mu­ni­ties be­ing list­ed on WASA’s tem­po­rary sup­ply sched­ules dur­ing the shut­down.

Padarath ac­knowl­edged that WASA had not al­ways been able to main­tain the sched­ules, but said the prob­lem was not uni­form across the coun­try.

“You are speak­ing of all of Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out pro­vid­ing me with any specifics, be­cause what we usu­al­ly do is get the da­ta from the dif­fer­ent re­gions,” he said.

“So far, the on­ly re­gion that is cre­at­ing a chal­lenge at this point has been the east­ern re­gion.”

He said re­duced pro­duc­tion, part­ly caused by low dam lev­els, had af­fect­ed WASA’s abil­i­ty to main­tain the sched­ules.

Padarath said the au­thor­i­ty had al­so re­de­ployed wa­ter trucks, par­tic­u­lar­ly to the east­ern and north-west­ern re­gions, while tank farms in parts of south Trinidad were op­er­at­ing at full ca­pac­i­ty. Tank farms in Pe­nal, Debe, Oropouche, Fyz­abad, Siparia and Princes Town were serv­ing at least 600 house­holds a week, with turn­around times of about two to three hours, he said.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al tank-farm ca­pac­i­ty in Cu­mu­to, Man­zanil­la, To­co, San­gre Grande and oth­er ar­eas.