Running dry: T&T warned to rethink how it manages water

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

The alarm bells are ring­ing. They’ve been ring­ing for some time now, but the clos­er we get to a wa­ter cri­sis, the loud­er it sounds. The wa­ter is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go have tran­scend­ed ad­min­is­tra­tions.

The year was 2009. A re­lent­less drought, su­per­charged by an in­tense El Niño pat­tern, dec­i­mat­ed the is­land’s wa­ter re­serves. Fol­low­ing a dis­as­trous­ly dry rainy sea­son that yield­ed on­ly a quar­ter of its typ­i­cal rain­fall, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) was forced to im­ple­ment strict, wide­spread wa­ter ra­tioning across the coun­try.

The ex­treme arid­i­ty trig­gered an un­prece­dent­ed surge in dev­as­tat­ing bush fires that strained emer­gency re­sources, while with­ered crops left farm­ers fac­ing mount­ing loss­es, prompt­ing re­gion­al me­te­o­rol­o­gists to is­sue ur­gent drought alerts.

Since then, the ebb and flow of this coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply has some­times made it to the head­lines, but the is­sue won’t go away.

This month, Ari­ma res­i­dents were the lat­est to com­plain about a lack of wa­ter. It comes amid a hot­ter (and dry­er) than usu­al wet sea­son. But if we look out­ward, the is­sue of ac­ces­si­ble wa­ter is both wide­spread and grim­mer the fur­ther we look.

Last month, Puer­to Ri­co en­forced 48-hour wa­ter shut-offs. The Philip­pines was forced to ra­tion wa­ter and cut ser­vices this month. Rough­ly 70 per cent of Eng­land is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing drought con­di­tions af­fect­ing 20 mil­lion peo­ple. Ger­many, Italy, parts of the Unit­ed States and the Mid­dle East are all be­ing se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

And for T&T and the rest of the world, it is a race to adap­ta­tion as there is lit­tle sign things are go­ing to get bet­ter any­time soon.

“We are def­i­nite­ly not alone in this chal­lenge,” Lau­rayne Lucky said.

She is the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Wa­ter and Waste­water As­so­ci­a­tion (CWWA). Lucky said the Caribbean is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the con­se­quences of greater rain­fall vari­abil­i­ty and more fre­quent and in­tense dry pe­ri­ods.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, this is not sim­ply about man­ag­ing a drought; it is about build­ing long-term wa­ter re­silience,” she added.

Dr Ronald Roop­nar­ine, who serves as act­ing dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture, told the Sun­day Guardian last week that while wa­ter stress lev­els can in­crease across the coun­try, it may not amount to a drought.

He said, “Drought is not mea­sured by just sim­ply rain falling to­day, but re­al­ly our wa­ter deficit ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time. So, the re­al­i­ty is that the pro­jec­tions in­di­cate that we will be in drought con­di­tions. It’s se­ri­ous, but it’s al­so not uni­form.”

The se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion has prompt­ed both ex­perts to warn that ac­tion must be tak­en to stave off the ef­fects of dry­er con­di­tions that promise to wors­en.

Roop­nar­ine said, “Every sin­gle mod­el is pro­ject­ing that the Caribbean will be­come warmer with con­se­quent high­er evap­o­ra­tion rates, a gen­er­al dry­ing ten­den­cy. Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­jec­tions sug­gest that the dry sea­son could ac­tu­al­ly length­en by about eight per cent by 2050.”

It’s a tall task for a coun­try that con­sumes 420 litres per per­son per day (re­port­ed as av­er­age na­tion­al dry-sea­son con­sump­tion in the 2024 Caribbean Sub-Re­gion­al Wa­ter Re­port). That’s more than twice the lev­el re­port­ed for sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries.

How­ev­er, Dr Roop­nar­ine said, with lim­it­ed me­ter­ing and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent non-rev­enue wa­ter, it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate ac­tu­al con­sump­tion from leak­age and oth­er sys­tem loss­es.

“We can­not man­age what we do not ac­cu­rate­ly mea­sure,” he stat­ed.

Roop­nar­ine went fur­ther, “Our best avail­able es­ti­mate is that ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the wa­ter en­ter­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem gen­er­ates no rev­enue. Not all of that is phys­i­cal leak­age, but the fig­ure points to ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture, me­ter­ing and man­age­ment de­fi­cien­cies. In a drought, we can­not ask cit­i­zens to con­serve every drop while the sys­tem may be los­ing or fail­ing to ac­count for rough­ly one in every two litres pro­duced.”

He said au­thor­i­ties must be re­al­is­tic on the amount of wa­ter they are work­ing with and make de­ci­sions ac­cord­ing­ly.

He said, “The re­al­i­ty is a lot of our com­mu­ni­ties, whether we do it for­mal­ly or not, have sort of adapt­ed in a way to not hav­ing a pipe-borne sup­ply of wa­ter 24-7. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the au­thor­i­ties must move away from re­act­ing to wa­ter short­ages af­ter they oc­cur and be­gin man­ag­ing the sys­tem proac­tive­ly, based on the wa­ter we ac­tu­al­ly have. This re­quires close co­or­di­na­tion with the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency, which should pro­vide the util­i­ty with clear, for­ward-look­ing as­sess­ments of cur­rent avail­abil­i­ty and pro­ject­ed in­flows. The util­i­ty can then plan sup­ply in ad­vance and make re­al­is­tic de­ci­sions based on the de­mand it is re­quired to meet.”