Requests judicious and conservative measures to deal with the situation
Saint Lucians are being urged to prioritize the conservation of water as the country experiences a dry spell that is impacting the country.
The Water and Sewerage Company Inc. (WASCO) has stated that the current dry spell with reduced rainfall and increased evaporation has significantly impacted its systems.
WASCO’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Zilta George-Leslie said most of the entity’s systems are beginning to dry up.
“We are calling it a dry spell, and we have not yet determined that it is a drought,” the WASCO official told reporters, at a news conference Wednesday.
Rapid water evaporation and low river flows were affecting the company’s systems, George-Leslie said.
WASCO’s systems are divided into the northern and southern zones, while the John Compton Dam serves all northern communities stretching from Cap Estate to Millet and Cul de Sac areas.
She explained that there have been “drastic reductions” in the water flow from the Talvern and Marquis sources, “and it is impacting all the customers and residents of the Babonneau region because the Hill 20 system serves the Babonneau region.”
George-Leslie noted that as of Wednesday morning, the John Compton Dam level was down to 325 feet, when generally the level would be 333 feet.
The situation has also impacted WASCO’s Southern system from Canaries to Dennery, resulting in decreases ranging from twenty to eighty percent depending on the community.
Meanwhile, a WASCO official stated that the biggest challenge is for customers to change their water consumption patterns.
“The biggest challenge we have thus far is that persons usage has not changed …and have not considered the reduced supplies coming from our intakes,” stated Hamish Joseph, WASCO’s Senior Operations Supervisor (Southern Services).
He said since WASCO could not implement drought measures on its own, the company wants to remind customers “to be mindful” that persons residing in elevated areas do not contaminate the water flowing to the lower regions.
In an effort to service persons in higher regions that have been affected, WASCO has instituted water rationing and is trucking water to customers in some areas.
“We must conserve our water so we have to be quite judicious in the way that we utilize water,” WASCO’s Chief Operations Officer, Lee Anthony emphasized. “We must not forget that we have a somewhat limited resource so we cannot afford to be wasteful…so, be judicious, be conservative and think of our neighbour. If we ever waste water that is water that someone else is not getting.”
He said that the dry season runs from December to May, and since its nearing the end of April, “we have one more month, and May is the most challenging of the months.”
In addition, WASCO is calling on farmers to desist from the indiscriminate practices of collecting water, particularly in the Talvern area, where they have created a dam in the river bed.
The company notes that due to the impact of the dry spell, farmers use water from the rivers,to carry out those sort of practices, that affects the water level flows.
WASCO reports that the company also monitors the possibility of water source contamination that filters down from the treatment plants, with fish in those ponds containing the most contaminants.
A WASCO official noted that the company monitors the fish daily, and if any fish are killed, the management alerts its ‘emergency unit’ to intervene with crisis management.