Midnight crackdown on wasting water

Tuesday, February 2 2010

From midnight tomorrow, the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) will impose water restrictions which will see a ban on persons using hoses to wash their cars and water their lawns.

It is part of WASA’s conservation drive for the dry season which is expected to be particularly severe with the shortfall in rainfall and drop in reservoir supplies.

At a media briefing at WASA’s head office, St Joseph to speak about WASA’s Water Supply Management Plan for the 2010 dry season, acting chief executive officer of WASA Jim Lee Young disclosed the imposition of the restrictions follows WASA’s conservation programme last December. However, the authority found “people are not really taking it seriously.”

Lee Young admitted that 50 percent of water produced by WASA was lost in leaks and said WASA had to get its “house in order”. However, while WASA dealt with leaks on its transmission and distribution, he underscored the role of the public. Lee Young said a significant loss of water was at the service connection at residents’ boundary through their property, leaking floats on tanks and cisterns on toilets.

He said a “robust monitoring and compliance regime” will be implemented. WASA’s community police will be assisting the public to ensure water supply is properly managed. Lee Young said WASA could not be everywhere at once since the security detail was small but it wanted the public to take responsibility and fix leaks in their homes and report leaks to WASA. WASA chief corporate officer Dion Abdool said the penalties for non-compliance under the law were “very small” ($89, $90) for each offence but continuing offences gave rise to a “new charge”. He said WASA could not go into homes and police plumbing defects but the onus was on the consumer to respond to leaks which could impact on water supply to their own household and neighbourhood.

WASA chairman Shafeek Sultan-Khan said universal metering was the way to prevent wastage of water. A pilot project is being used in some homes for metering and baseline studies are being done. He said metering will also help with water distribution because when households received exorbitant bills they would conserve and water would reach other residents on the line.

WASA currently has a backlog of 400 leaks and received reports of 90 leaks daily and cleared this number. Lee Young said customer care centres will be available round-the-clock to receive calls about leaks and will have dedicated teams to deal with large leaks immediately. Rainfall for December last year was 25 percent of what was forecast and for January the total rainfall was over 30 mm when the Met Office had previously predicted 87 mm that was revised down to 54 mm and then 38 mm.

To ensure there is sufficient water at the end of the dry season particularly Arena dam, Lee Young said production had to be reduced. He said water will have to be made up elsewhere and additional supply will come from five portable water treatment plants in south Trinidad with each having a capacity of half million gallons.

Thirty-four wells will be brought into production which will have a capacity of ten million gallons. Four small packaged desalination plans with a capacity of give million gallons will be installed in Pt Fortin, La Brea, Woodlands and Erin.

Source: http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,115163.html