Maintenance on schedule at Point Lisas desal plant

The maintenance work that necessitated the shutdown at the Desalination Company of TT (Desalcott) in Point Lisas could be completed earlier than the nine days assigned for it.

Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) CEO Kelvin Romain said on Thursday, "Based on what I saw today, I anticipate that they are ahead of schedule, and we could possibly be hitting below the nine days, hopefully."

He spoke to the media after touring Desalcott, a subsidiary of the HKL Group of Companies, at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate. He was accompanied by Desalcott's managing director, John Thompson, and other officials.

The shutdown started on October 16 and is set to end on October 24.

Desalcott is contracted to supply WASA with 40 million gallons of water per day. Some of it supplies the estate, and the remaining boosts the supply to areas in central and southwest Trinidad.

Romain also stressed the importance of water conservation, callingon customers to: "Use what you need.

"WASA still has that deficit of 40 million gallons per day. We put in place some schedules to service our customers. We are more or less around 80 per cent within those schedules," Romain said.

"We envisage that we may have had to make some adjustments, and that would have been in our risk-management assessment. From early tomorrow, some of the schedules will be adjusted."

He added that WASA had shortfalls in Fyzabad, parts of La Brea, Pluck Road, and San Francique, but said it had anticipated some of them and was "adjusting to suit."

The schedules are posted on WASA’s social media pages.

Thompson also said the work was on schedule, and Desalcott was still hoping to improve on it.

He added work on the first day ramped down, and on the last day, it is expected to ramp up.

During the tour, Thompson explained the stages of removing solids from seawater.

He looked at the two main electrical transformers which are being worked on.

"Work on one of the transformers is completed, and we are now working on the second. The work is being done in close co-ordination with the TT Electricity Commission," he added.

He also showed other transformers and the main electrical room, where "considerable work" is ongoing and on schedule.

Thompson added, "We are also doing work at the intake, where Yara (International) and Phoenix Park have co-operated with us. We haven't had ship movements, which would have stopped us doing work on our intake.

"Yara has also been very helpful and supporting us with the work which we are doing."

He showed the membranes (barriers that allow water to pass through but filter out unwanted substances), saying the plant has 12,000 membranes.

"They are quite expensive – US$500 each – and we have to change them on average every five years because of the algae and other problems.

"In recent times that (has been) reduced.So it is now somewhere between three and four years. In fact, some membranes have only lasted a year."