The island’s water situation is no better as 2026 starts flowing.
The Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO) continues grappling with trying to survive in an increasingly hostile environment and the Water Resource Management Authority (WRMA) is at its wit’s end trying to navigate old and new unchartered waters.
Constrained by Public Sector restraints on state-owned or government-funded entities, the publicly-owned company can’t operate by normal private sector rules, even though it must sell its product to survive.
WASCO has to balance between selling water to survive financially and splitting its attention between private sector customers and its duty to all local household consumers.
But accumulated inattentiveness to major problems over time, new problems with an expanding customer base, the company has simply been unable to serve fully and increasingly unkind effects of Climate Change, are together threatening to drown WASCO in its own rippling waters.
The company produces less water than its original storage capacity and despite the millions spent trying and failing, solving the problems of the John Compton Dam at Roseau and the T.R. Theobalds treatment plant at Ciceron may take a decade.
Meanwhile, increasing demand – especially in Gros Islet – is resulting in disproportionate distribution of available water in Castries and WASCO’s inability to supply as needed is causing a serious negative backlash on potential local and foreign investments.
WASCO’s and private water tankers clog the Castries-Gros Islet Highway daily, while areas like Piat and La Borne (among many others) have for very-long been off major pipeline grids to the North and had to depend on unscheduled water trucked to homes by WASCO – by request.
The discussions continue about the current Dry Season and the need for ‘water conservation by consumers’ and the technocrats and policy makers have again had to look at desalination as an option, most agreeing it’s the best for now, but all also saying it’s ‘too expensive’.
But is that really so?
Desalination today is not like yesteryear, as there are companies worldwide providing ‘desal’ services in some Caribbean islands that have built a wealth of experience over time.
In such cases, national water authorities have concluded that with operating and maintenance costs more liquid than cash, it’ll be better to outsource than invest in local desal operations, at least for now.
Water operators agree that with desalination no-longer a prohibitive proposition, it might be better to make it available to the guzzling enterprises up North (hotels, malls, yacht repair, fish-landing, baths and others).
That would cut-down on the oversupply of WASCO water in a manner that deprives households located too-far off the regular main Castries-Gros Islet flow.
Another proposition is that desal water be produced by an offshore operator and distributed by WASCO.
This type of thinking is necessary at this stage because the experts indicate that in these times, we can no-longer depend on old mechanisms designed for a much-earlier time.
As noted by Christos Charisiadis, a Greek expert on desalination: “Desalination isn’t cheap. But neither is water insecurity.”
He also points out that “Used properly, targeted, renewable-powered and well regulated, desalination isn’t a silver bullet. It’s insurance in a system under climate stress.”
But then how close are we to such thinking?
Successive management teams at WASCO over the last 25 years have barely managed to keep the company floating, seeming to stress more on macro intentions than immediate problems — like ensuring water flows through every pipeline.
It’s not enough for WASCO to be selling water tanks at reduced prices; and no community in this day and age should be without water “for days” or even irregular supplies weeks, months or years.
WASCO’s mission is to ensure everyone on island can get drinking water, not only at home but also through public facilities.
Water-loss is another major issue facing Caribbean water facilities, with unacceptably high levels being recorded annually thanks to technical difficulties and wasteful practices, as well as incidents of water theft.
How we treat waste water is another continuing problem.
Sewerage services are always necessary, but handling of other forms of manufactured and human-generated waste continues to be a problem, for lack of sustained and systematic community information and stakeholder education.
And then there the fact that we drink the same water we flush our toilets with.
Any study will show that flushing the toilet consumes more water than we may think, and it must worry us that while we flush with drinking water, there are still many worldwide without direct access to any type of water.
We also use five gallons to flush one fluid ounce urine in a toilet bowl, bathe for as long as we like, water our gardens and wash our cars with the same water we pay for, but does it have to be so?
Europeans have started looking at how to separate drinking and toilet water – and there’s good reason.
In the UK, around 30% of domestic water use is for toilet flushing and it’s the single biggest use in the home at a rate of roughly 40 to 45 litres per person, per day, of drinking quality water.
In the Netherlands, it is closer to 23%, largely through more efficient systems, while Australia normalized rainwater for toilet flushing years ago.
This matters now because the system in those countries is under stress, but it’s a matter that should be of no-less concern to Caribbean water utilities and consumers.
Plumbing systems can be developed, for example, to channel home wastewater to use for flushing, gardening or other non-drinking purposes.
We also need to change our concept of water conservation from being advised to engage in traditional water harvesting (collecting rainwater in drums or piping water to overhead tanks).
But none of that will happen without greater and more sustained efforts to get people to really understand that water isn’t only for drinking – and why every drop should be saved in every possible way, every single day.