Contractor caught dumping dirt in river made to 'adopt' it

THE Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) is making a contractor adopt the Guanapo River after he was caught illegally dumping dirt into it two weeks ago, so that the Caroni Water Treatment Plant had to shut down for repair.

Speaking to the media during a tour of the facility on Wednesday, WASA’s executive director Dr Lennox Sealy said the contractor, Harry Persad and Sons Ltd, was contacted and one of the proposals include having the company adopt the river and be responsible for its upkeep. He added that a berm had already been repaired.

This adopt-a-river programme, he said, will be stretched across the country so that other contractors and quarry operators will be tasked with keeping rivers that they use as clean as possible. The Lopinot River has already been identified as another river to be adopted, he said. Sealy did not divulge the cost that the contractor is expected to pay in addition to adopting the river but said there is a financial understanding that the two parties will agree to, along with other contractors tasked with adopting a river.

Also commenting on the issue was Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales. Asked the cost of having the plant shut down for several hours, as the water was too turbid to be treated, Gonzales said, “We are still assessing the cost, not only to WASA but to the people of TT.”

He added that it cost taxpayers millions of dollars to treat the water before it is distributed.

“We have asked the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) to conduct a full analysis to determine whether any water pollution rules were breached and tasked the in-house general counsel at WASA for ways in which WASA can take legal action against the contractor.

"That is part of the problem in Trinidad and Tobago. People are not being held to account. We don’t intend to let this go unpunished.”

The turbidity of the water as a result of the dumping affected some 300,000 customers in north, central and south Trinidad. In addition, the plant ran at around 50 per cent capacity for some time, producing 45 million gallons instead of the usual 75 million gallons of water daily.