The regional drought has abated, however officials at the St. Kitts Water Department are urging consumers to continue conserving the precious resource.

Since early February, St. Kitts and Nevis, along with other Caribbean countries, found itself in the grips of a drought, which necessitated drastic water conservation measures.

The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) had predicted the drought affecting countries in the region would continue until May, however thanks to several weeks of heavy and frequent rainfall, the situation has recently improved to a point where local water officials are hopeful that the worst is behind them.

Speaking to The Observer, Assistant Engineer of Operations at the St. Kitts Water Department, Denison Paul, said consumers should not revert to the old ways of water wastage. Paul said he was pleased with the public's response, which prevented the country from entering a water-rationing stage.

"First I would like to thank the public for their cooperation during that period of drought. We definitely saw an improvement in the water usage over the past few months. It was lucky that a period of rainfall alleviated the water shortage problem, however that does not mean that persons should go back to wasting water. We are not out of the woods yet," he said.

Paul explained that conservation must become standard practise for consumers, as other problems may affect the water supply in the future.

"About 70 percent of our water comes from underground wells and many of these use generators to pump reserve supplies. If we have mechanical problems or power problems then we have less water available to supply consumers. Once we conserve, there would be a greater supply of water readily available in the case of prolonged electrical outages. There is a direct correlation between power supply and water generation so a steady water supply is not only dependent on rainfall."

Paul said conservation methods must be employed, especially in anticipation of a very hot and dry summer period. He also noted that during the drought period, the public's level of vigilance was impressive.

"When we first informed of the drought and told consumers to report leaks, they did an excellent job of calling us to look into both private and public pipelines with leaks. Since the rains there has been a decrease in the number of reports being made. The public may have lapsed but there is still need to conserve and therefore reporting leaks is a must."

In January, rainfall levels fell by 0.35 inches compared to that of January 2009. The situation worsened drastically when levels fell to 0.02 inches in February. Officials consider water usage in St. Kitts to be "very high considering the population size", with roughly 5 million gallons used on a daily basis by about 35,000 residents. Nevis has a population of approximately 12,500, with a daily water usage of about 1.8 million gallons.