WASA: 20m gallon deficit at Caroni plant

AT THE height of the rainy season, the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) is experiencing a 20 million gallon-a-day deficit at its Caroni Water Treatment Plant, due to drier than normal conditions.

Given the shortfall in water production and low levels at the nation's major dams and reservoirs, the Public Utilities minister has secured a commitment from Desalcott that it will not conduct a scheduled maintenance of its desalination plant in October.

WASA's acting CEO Kelvin Romain made this announcement during a media conference at the Ministry of Public Utilities in St Clair on September 26. He thanked the minister for his efforts.

“He (Minister Marvin Gonzales) would have reached out to Desalcott’s Mr Kamarath who agreed to reschedule the desal shutdown as a result of our existing conditions,” Romain said.

He said a typical shutdown would usually last five to ten days and would take away approximately 40 million gallons per day from the network, under normal circumstances.

“With the low river levels and the low reservoir levels, we have had to cut production back to 45 million gallons, sometimes we go up to 55 million gallons. To put it in perspective, the Caroni Water Treatment plant produces 75 million gallons of water. When we cut back to 45 million, that’s about 60 per cent of its production capacity.

“Cutting back to 60 per cent and Desal being out, it would have had a really negative impact on the network, more so to regain that normalcy would have taken time. Following the shutdown, it could have taken a month to get back to normal and we certainly cannot normalise when we have curtailment in our production.”

Climatologist Kaidar Kissoon said below-normal rainfall and warm temperatures are expected for September-November, with a wet start to the 2025 dry season. He said that in Trinidad, there has been less rainfall than predicted in June, July and August. As a result, there was not enough rainfall to replenish rivers and reservoirs.

He said there were two reasons for this below-normal rainfall and warm temperatures.

The first, was that Enso-neutral conditions are still present in the Pacific Ocean, as the La Nina effect was forming much slower than normal. The Enso-neutral condition is a weather term to describe the warm phase (El Niño) and cool phase (La Niña). Neutral means that temperatures, winds, convection (rising air) and rainfall across the tropical Pacific are near long-term averages.

Kissoon said it is hoped there would be positive rainfall beginning in November.

He said the other reason was that warm sea surface temperatures are present east of TT and into the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Last week Thursday, the Met Office placed TT on a five-day heat-spell Yellow Alert.

WASA's acting director of operations Shaira Ali said the decrease in expected rainfall led to a "staggering" water deficit of up to 33 million gallons during the dry season.

She said at present, water in the three reservoirs in Trinidad are at significantly lower levels than their long-term averages while the Hillsborough reservoir in Tobago has recovered and is at 98.4 per cent capacity – above the long-term average of 79.8 per cent.

Ali said the Caroni/Arena Reservoir is at 35.8 per cent capacity, with a long-term average of 76.4 per cent. The Hollis Reservoir is at 32.7 per cent capacity, with a long-term average of 69.7 per cent, and the Navet Reservoir is at 45.4 per cent, with a long-term average of 77.1 per cent.

“With the exception of Hillsborough for the months of July, August and September, the storage capacity of all the reservoirs was significantly below projections for the rainy season.

“Except the months of June and July, the rainfall received at all reservoirs was significantly below projections for the rainy season. Periods of increased rainfall allowed for the recovery of several localized surface water sources,” she said.

She said in terms of production, the Caroni/Arena water treatment plant had been reduced to an output of 45 million gallons a day. She said however that due to recent rainfall, the authority had been able to increase the output to 55 million gallons on Thursday.

She said the Hollis water treatment plant is currently producing 4.5 million gallons, with its design capacity being 8.4 million gallons. The Navet water treatment plant is currently producing 15 million gallons per day.

Ali said other localised smaller water treatment plants were still operating normally, and these in addition to the use of localised sources, were off-setting deficiencies in the three reservoirs.

She said the authority will be issuing new schedules in some areas to manage these issues of production and distribution.

Ali said the number of leaks is currently at 400 and she anticipates that the backlog of leaks would be addressed in October, with the figure being reduced to 200.

WASA communications manager Daniel Plenty appealed to the public to do their part in conserving water, including by taking shorter showers, using a bucket to wash vehicles instead of a hose, defrosting food overnight instead of thawing frozen foods with running water, outfitting hoses with a shut-off nozzle, inspecting taps and pipes for leaks and repairing them immediately, reducing losses from evaporation by watering lawns during early morning hours and setting water settings on washing machines to the specific loads being washed.