At the start of next week, the Desalination Company of Trinidad and Tobago (DESALCOTT), will undertake its usual annual maintenance works, resulting in a shutdown of the plant for five days.
The Water and Sewerage Authority gives an assurance that contingency measures are in place. Alicia Boucher has the details.
00:00According to DeSalcote, its desalination plant will shut down on Monday, November 11th for a total of five days
00:08and operations are expected to resume on Sunday, November 17th.
00:12Acting General Manager of DeSalcote, Rajesh Raghunanan, says the maintenance works are necessary to address a number of areas.
00:20Which includes cleaning of all of our holding tanks, our flux head basin, our well, wet well, etc.
00:29We also have some other critical jobs which we have to do at this time, which includes structural repairs to various concrete structures
00:37and repair of the wet well liner, repair to our RO trains, liner repairs on the wet well, repairs to the sludge removal mechanism on the flux head basin,
00:52pipework tie-ins to our new product storage tank, upgrades to our well communication network throughout the plant,
00:59replacement of the product flow meters, and our annual transformer maintenance, which is also a requirement with the NTEC.
01:10In this regard, DeSalcote states that the delivery of its water supply to the Water and Sewerage Authority will cut off at midnight on Monday.
01:19This service accounts for 40 million imperial gallons per day or around 35 to 40 percent of the supply to South Trinidad.
01:27Acting Chief Executive Officer of WASA, Kelvin Romaine, notes that DeSalcote delayed the shutdown which was initially planned for October,
01:35but due to low reservoir levels, there was ministerial intervention.
01:39He says WASA is in a little better position at this time.
01:43We should be able to facilitate without any major mishaps the shutdown.
01:50Now, it is important for us to communicate that on WASA's side we have put contingencies in place to deal with basically the shutdown.
02:04Apart from Kareni Water Treatment Plant being at full capacity at 75 MGD,
02:09WASA says it will be ramping up production at some of its other facilities, including at the Navette plant for which its reservoir is presently at 50 percent.
02:19In addition, the truck bone service is set to be increased.
02:22There will be new schedules set for the areas affected and those will be published tomorrow latest and will be available on all media platforms.
02:32The customers who are on the extreme system, extreme part of the system, they usually receive the one in nine upwards, right?
02:39And we are trying to maintain that at least at its minimum.
02:42But customers in this instance who receive a 24-7 supply, they will change from a 24-3 to a 24-4 supply in some instances.
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