The alarm bells are ring­ing. They’ve been ring­ing for some time now, but the clos­er we get to a wa­ter cri­sis, the loud­er it sounds. The wa­ter is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go have tran­scend­ed ad­min­is­tra­tions.

The year was 2009. A re­lent­less drought, su­per­charged by an in­tense El Niño pat­tern, dec­i­mat­ed the is­land’s wa­ter re­serves. Fol­low­ing a dis­as­trous­ly dry rainy sea­son that yield­ed on­ly a quar­ter of its typ­i­cal rain­fall, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) was forced to im­ple­ment strict, wide­spread wa­ter ra­tioning across the coun­try.

The ex­treme arid­i­ty trig­gered an un­prece­dent­ed surge in dev­as­tat­ing bush fires that strained emer­gency re­sources, while with­ered crops left farm­ers fac­ing mount­ing loss­es, prompt­ing re­gion­al me­te­o­rol­o­gists to is­sue ur­gent drought alerts.