WASA expands leak management at Point Lisas

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to re­cov­er treat­ed wa­ter loss­es at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate through an ex­pand­ed Leak Man­age­ment Pro­gramme by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, WASA has in­ten­si­fied leak de­tec­tion and re­pair works at Point Lisas as part of its Evo­lu­tion Plan, with a fo­cus on re­duc­ing non-rev­enue wa­ter. The pro­gramme is be­ing car­ried out un­der min­is­te­r­i­al di­rec­tion and in part­ner­ship with the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

Joint in­spec­tions by WASA and PLIPDE­CO iden­ti­fied 15 leaks with­in the es­tate. Nine were found to be af­fect­ing in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­i­ties in­volved in petro­chem­i­cal, am­mo­nia, methanol, steel and gas pro­cess­ing. The leaks were re­port­ed as ear­ly as 2020 and were not ad­dressed at that time.

WASA es­ti­mates that the iden­ti­fied leaks re­sult­ed in loss­es of about six mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons of treat­ed wa­ter per day. The au­thor­i­ty said these loss­es oc­curred while res­i­den­tial ar­eas in Cen­tral and South Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced low pres­sure and wa­ter sup­ply sched­ules.

Five of the ma­jor leaks are cur­rent­ly un­der re­pair. The works are be­ing se­quenced to ac­count for un­der­ground in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing gas pipelines, util­i­ty cir­cuits and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions lines. Fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing at Brechin Cas­tle, where a leak re­quires shut­down and ex­ca­va­tion.

Min­is­ter Padarath said en­gi­neer­ing chal­lenges do not jus­ti­fy de­lays in ad­dress­ing known leaks and stat­ed that the pro­gramme forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s Wa­ter for All man­date.

The iden­ti­fied lo­ca­tions in­clude At­lantic Av­enue and Pa­cif­ic Av­enue, At­lantic Av­enue and Caspi­an Dri­ve, Ama­zon Dri­ve, Caribbean Dri­ve and ar­eas near in­dus­tri­al plants. WASA said the pro­gramme re­mains with­in a six to eight week time­frame, with com­ple­tion ex­pect­ed by the end of Jan­u­ary 2026.