KEVON FELMINE

While many South and Cen­tral Trinidad com­mu­ni­ties wel­comed the re­turn of wa­ter to their taps, frus­tra­tion over the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) man­age­ment of the week-long Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant shut­down per­sist­ed.

Some cus­tomers be­gan re­ceiv­ing wa­ter yes­ter­day morn­ing, but oth­ers had to wait well in­to the evening. WASA’s act­ing CEO, Kelvin Ro­main, ex­plained that ser­vice nor­mal­i­sa­tion could take one to three days fol­low­ing the re­sump­tion of the plant.

The De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny (De­sal­cott), which pro­vides WASA with 40 mil­lion gal­lons dai­ly (mgd), shut­down for an­nu­al main­te­nance start­ing No­vem­ber 11. WASA had is­sued a re­vised wa­ter sup­ply sched­ule, but cus­tomers in ar­eas such as San Fer­nan­do, Cou­va, Fyz­abad, Pe­nal, Wood­land, and San Fran­cique com­plained they did not re­ceive any wa­ter on their sched­uled days.

Many cus­tomers, who took to so­cial me­dia, said when they sought truck-borne wa­ter they were told they need­ed to wait three to five days for de­liv­ery, with some claim­ing they nev­er re­ceived a sup­ply. Oth­ers said they had to pur­chase wa­ter pri­vate­ly, re­ly on the fire ser­vice, or go with­out en­tire­ly due to high de­mand.

De­sal­cott com­plet­ed main­te­nance a day ahead of sched­ule and re­sumed op­er­a­tions at 5 pm on Sat­ur­day. Ac­cord­ing to a WASA state­ment, the plant was ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion to its full ca­pac­i­ty yes­ter­day. WASA ad­vised cus­tomers that ser­vice nor­mal­i­sa­tion would be grad­ual as it worked to sta­bilise its trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems.

Ro­main ac­knowl­edged the sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion caused by the re­moval of 40 mgd from the sys­tem, which would take sev­er­al days to re­cov­er ful­ly.

“Most af­fect­ed cus­tomers will see ser­vice nor­malise with­in 24 to 72 hours. How­ev­er, those in el­e­vat­ed ar­eas or at the ex­trem­i­ties of the sys­tem may need to wait a bit longer,” Ro­main said.

Re­gard­ing com­plaints about missed sched­ules, Ro­main not­ed that se­vere flood­ing in Pe­nal last week forced WASA to redi­rect sup­ply to as­sist with clean-up ef­forts. This, he said, caused de­lays for com­mu­ni­ties such as Princes Town, Bar­rack­pore, and St Mary’s.

“The ex­tend­ed shut­down had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on our net­work, par­tic­u­lar­ly in el­e­vat­ed and re­mote ar­eas,” Ro­main ex­plained. “One mit­i­ga­tion mea­sure was ramp­ing up the truck-borne ser­vice to ad­dress in­creased de­mand.”

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that it was im­pos­si­ble to meet the im­me­di­ate needs of all af­fect­ed cus­tomers, lead­ing to longer wait times. Dur­ing the shut­down, WASA said South and Cen­tral cus­tomers made 1,599 re­quests for truck-borne wa­ter, with de­liv­er­ies still on­go­ing.

Ro­main de­fend­ed WASA’s over­all re­sponse, stat­ing that the au­thor­i­ty em­ploys mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems to as­sess the ef­fec­tive­ness of sched­ules and ad­just op­er­a­tions as need­ed.

“This helps us iden­ti­fy ar­eas re­quir­ing truck-borne ser­vices and make op­er­a­tional im­prove­ments.”

WASA al­so im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures such as re­dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter from the Ca­roni and Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants, en­sur­ing ad­e­quate reser­voir stor­age be­fore the shut­down, and in­creas­ing wa­ter truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty. De­spite these ef­forts, some com­mu­ni­ties strug­gled to re­ceive a re­li­able sup­ply.

Ro­main stressed that man­ag­ing a ma­jor fa­cil­i­ty’s ex­tend­ed shut­down, like Point Lisas De­sal, pos­es sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.

“Los­ing 40 mil­lion gal­lons dai­ly af­fects our abil­i­ty to main­tain wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion. How­ev­er, these mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures al­lowed us to main­tain ser­vice for most cus­tomers dur­ing the shut­down,” he added.

For cus­tomers still await­ing a re­turn to reg­u­lar ser­vice, WASA pledged to con­tin­ue its ef­forts to nor­malise sup­ply while keep­ing the pub­lic in­formed through up­dat­ed sched­ules.