As the Water Authority of Fiji has sounded alarm bells regarding dry spell causing water disruption along the Suva to Lami corridor for the next three months, the Fiji Meteorological Service has confirmed that normal or below normal rainfall is expected across the Western and Central Division during this period.
They say ENSO-neutral conditions are currently favoured to persist until at least August to October, with a transition to La Niña state likely during the September to November period.
During neutral ENSO conditions, Fiji generally experiences average rainfall, however, local weather systems and lingering effects of the recent El Niño event, can still cause variations, especially during the current dry season.
Meanwhile, WAF says out of the six main raw water sources for the Tamavua system, the Savura Intake and Headworks 3 have reached critical levels.
They say with Headworks 1, Headworks 2 and the Waimanu Pump Station approaching critical levels, only one of the six sources - the Cascade source continues to operate normally.
WAF Regional Manager Operations, Samuela Rokovaleusa says with the weather pattern forecasts, we should expect the situation to impact WAF’s operations further as we approach the dry season from August to October.
He says during this period, areas supplied from the Tamavua Water Treatment Plant system may experience intermittent supply as WAF Operation Teams might have to resort to valve operation subject to the treated water production levels.
Rokovaleusa says the critical raw water production is due to low rainfall experienced at the catchments, which poses a low treated water production and a struggling reservoir level for the Tamavua Reservoir.
He says with suppressed rainfall experienced within the last 2 months, most sources are now at the base flow condition hence total stream flows are dominated by groundwater contributions.
Rokovaleusa says minor rainfall events might not be significant enough to recover sources thus prolonged or high rainfall event is badly needed, however, the forecast for the next 3 months does not confidently indicate wet conditions for most of Fiji.
WAF says the decrease in the raw water sources has a direct impact on the water production efforts which in turn causes reservoir levels to deplete which will further delay the restoration of 24/7 water supply to elevated areas of the Tamavua system.
They say the WAF Hydrology Team is actively monitoring the situation at the main raw water sources.
WAF is urging customers to be water-wise and always store adequate amounts of water to sustain a household for at least two days.
