LAST week’s major leak in Valsayn affecting thousands of customers of Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) in East Trinidad amid water restrictions imposed for the 2024 Dry Season, including the ban on the use of hoses, has again raised concerns about the amount of water wasted through leaks both large and small.
In 2017, then Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte said 50 per cent of the water produced by the WASA is lost through leaks before even reaching the consumer. He was speaking at the Rotary Club of Port of Spain’s post-budget luncheon on October 17.
On March 10, WASA put out a full-page ad refuting this figure, which said “These are the facts – WASA does not lose 50 per cent of its water to leaks and has never released any data to this effect. While the authority has publicised its challenges regarding high levels of non-revenue water (NRW), it must be noted that this category of water loss includes leaks, illegal connections and unauthorised consumption.”
In response to questions from Newsday, Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales decried the persistence of the statistic. The authority’s total daily water production capacity is approximately 243 imperial million gallons per day.
Asked about the current NRW figures, Gonzales said WASA was currently working on its annual water balance, which would provide further updates on NRW levels. “It is really sad that the media continue to rely on that statement made how many years ago and not even recent statements by me or by WASA. It is wholly inaccurate for anyone to contend that half of WASA’s water is lost through physical leaks. If that was the case, then converted into gallons that would have been 120 million gallons a day. Absolute madness. We would have been driving to work in a boat.”
He said WASA had cleaned up its leak backlog to under 500, down from 5,000 three years ago. “There has been a changeover of over 15 kilometres of high leakage pipelines around the country. This is the continued strategy to reduce NRW and physical losses on the pipeline infrastructure.”
He said NRW performance metrics were used by water utility companies to measure their performance relating to unbilled consumptions, illegal connections, unbilled metered consumption, etc, and was endorsed by the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA).
“Non-revenue water comprises the following components, real losses, apparent losses, and unbilled authorised consumption. Apparent and real losses can be further subdivided into unauthorised consumption, meter inaccuracies, leakage in transmission and distribution mains, storage tank leaks and service connection leaks up to the meter.
“Unbilled authorised consumption describes unbilled metered consumption and unbilled unmetered consumption. What does this actually mean? We are all stakeholders in contributing to this 50 per cent figure, both WASA and the public. Let us therefore recognise our joint investment in reducing this figure through various water conservation efforts, while WASA expeditiously treats wit
