The Tamavua Water Treatment Plant needs 75 megalitres of water per day to run normally, however if there is seawater intrusion at the Savura intake in Wailoku then there is a problem.
Water Authority Chief Operations Officer, Seru Soderberg highlighted this at WAF’s Annual Customer Forum at Holiday Inn, saying for the Savura intake, they have to monitor the tide.
The Chief Operations Officer says once that runs short, they can no longer run 21 megalitres into the treatment plant.
He says 21 megalitres is extracted from Savura, 30 from Waimanu River and the balance to make it 75 megalitres comes from headworks 3.
Soderberg also says that they will be upgrading the Tamavua Water Treatment Plant in the next few years to boost the capacity.
He says the worst case scenario during the drought last year, they needed to extract 75 megalitres but only had a maximum extraction rate of 65 million litres a day.
Soderberg says they were operating under that condition for about 3 weeks.
He says for each source, they are putting in multiple intakes, just to try and extract as much water as they can, capturing at the top end, in the middle, and at the bottom.
