Over 300,000 people are being urged to put measures in place in preparation for the planned seven-day shutdown of the Point Lisas Desalination Plant from Monday.
From Monday, the Desalination Company of Trinidad and Tobago (Desalcott) will be shutting down the Point Lisas Desalination Plant which supplies in excess of 40 million gallons of water per day, mostly for South and Central Trinidad.
Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Water and Sewerage Authority, Kelvin Romain, expects 300,000 to 350,000 people to be affected by the seven-day shutdown, but is promising to boost capacity at various Water Treatment Plants.
“Our Caroni Water Treatment Plant will be at full production at 75 million gallons. We also have some contingent supply from the Navet Water Treatment Plant which will be ramping up from time to time over the period.”
Other than boosting supply at the Caroni and Navet Water Treatment Plants, WASA said it will also implement temporary supply schedules to mitigate the effects of the supply shortfall, ensuring there’s enough capacity storage at critical service reservoirs, increasing its water trucking capacity, and ensuring there’s special emphasis to supply schools, health institutions, and Homes for the Aged among others.
Acting General Manager at Desalcott, Rajesh Ragoonanan, said the plant would be restarted by Sunday November 17th, noting that the annual maintenance is critical.
“Which includes cleaning all of our holding tanks, basin, wet well etc. We also have some other critical jobs which we have to do at this time which includes structural repairs to various concrete structures and repair of the wet well liner.”
While the plan for Desalcott is to start back up the plant before Sunday, Mr. Romain said he’s concerned about the normalisation of water from the Authority side.
“That takes time and it could take in some instances from 24 hours to one week, to seven days, and could be more and this is always my concern and how we deal with that, I’m also concerned with.”
He said the decision was made to cancel the initial shutdown in September to allow for a greater recovery of the Authority’s supply networks, following what he called a ‘harsh dry season.’
“Because of the fact, at that point in time our reservoirs levels were not at what we would say acceptable levels. Additionally, the river levels at Caroni would’ve been significantly low, which would’ve resulted in us curtailing the production at our Caroni Water Treatment Plant. We are not in the best position as it is right now, however we are a little better.”
WASA is urging affected customers in Central and South Trinidad to put measures in place to store and use water as efficiently as possible during the planned shutdown.