48 March 2016 - Business View Caribbean
meter of produced water. Desalination used to cost in
the region of two to three U.S. dollars per cubic meter.
Through reverse osmosis, large plants are producing
desalinated water, now, in the range of one U.S. dollar
to two U.S. dollars.”
But if desalinized water is still more expensive than
water that is conventionally treated, why would WA-
SA’s industrial clients want to pay the extra amount?
Thompson explains: “We provide them higher purity
water than is generally provided through fresh water
sources. Industrial companies require a very high-
purity water, higher than what you need to drink. An
industrial company needs water that’s distilled, and
de-ionized and which has only one or five parts per
million of impurities. The World Health Organization’s
country standard is that drinking water should have
less than 500 parts per million of impurities. Normal
water treatment by WASA in Trinidad is pretty good -
they probably achieve between 200 and 300 parts per
million. But the specification for our water is 85 parts
per million. So this means that the industrial compa-
nies at Point Lisas have to spend less money on ion-
exchange chemicals to get the water down to being
the ionized water they need. And the reason they need
de-ionized water is because they use steam in their
