Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A San Juan busi­ness­man will have to wait a lit­tle over a week to learn the out­come of his law­suit over dam­age to his busi­ness al­leged­ly caused by a faulty sew­er pipeline.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad re­served judg­ment in Matthew Ed­wards’ case against the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to next week Thurs­day af­ter pre­sid­ing over a tri­al at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In his law­suit, Ed­wards, who op­er­ates a store sell­ing pi­rat­ed DVDs, com­put­er parts, toys and ice cream at a rent­ed build­ing in San Juan, claimed the is­sue with WASA’s sew­er pipeline arose in late Oc­to­ber 2021 when he no­ticed wa­ter and sew­er­age over­flow­ing from the toi­let at the prop­er­ty.

He ini­tial­ly be­lieved the toi­let was clogged and sought to rec­ti­fy it us­ing a rub­ber plunger. He said his land­lord came to his as­sis­tance af­ter his at­tempts to stop the flow failed.

They even­tu­al­ly cut the PVC pipe con­nect­ing the build­ing’s sew­er sys­tem to the WASA sew­er pipeline which runs un­der­ground along the East­ern Main Road.

Ed­wards claimed that his busi­ness suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant dam­age as it was flood­ed with sewage be­fore he and his land­lord were able to im­ple­ment the tem­po­rary so­lu­tion. He said he and his land­lord made sev­er­al re­ports to WASA but the au­thor­i­ty’s staff took more than a month to re­spond and re­pair the is­sue, which he claimed em­anat­ed from its pipeline.

Ed­wards claimed that he lost al­most $60,000 in stock and spent al­most $3,000 clean­ing the busi­ness. He al­so claimed that he lost out on over $20,000 in prof­its as he was forced to close his busi­ness for 45 days be­fore the sit­u­a­tion with the sew­er pipeline was ad­dressed by WASA.

He con­tend­ed that WASA was neg­li­gent in fail­ing to pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly in­spect and main­tain the pipeline and in its de­lay in rec­ti­fy­ing the is­sue.

Ed­wards main­tained his claims about his busi­ness be­ing flood­ed even af­ter be­ing shown pho­tographs he sup­plied af­ter the flood had al­leged­ly sub­sided.

WASA’s lawyer Kirk Ben­gochea point­ed out that box­es con­tain­ing stuffed an­i­mals which were on the ground did not ap­pear to be wa­ter­logged. He al­so asked why Ed­wards had not tak­en pho­tographs of the flood­ed busi­ness.

In its de­fence, WASA ad­mit­ted that the over­flow was due to a col­lapse in its sew­er in­fra­struc­ture but de­nied any wrong­do­ing as it claimed that it has a prop­er and ad­e­quate main­te­nance pro­gramme.

“The sew­er­age over­flow oc­curred not as a re­sult of a fail­ure to main­tain the pipeline but be­cause of the age of the sew­er­age in­fra­struc­ture along the East­ern Main Road in Pe­tit Bourg,” it said.

WASA’s sew­er sys­tems man­ag­er Ter­ron Cob­ham, who su­per­vised the ini­tial site vis­it and the even­tu­al re­pairs, ad­mit­ted that he and his col­league’s re­sponse was de­layed as at the time they were en­gaged in a ma­jor project to reroute wa­ter main pipelines in Beetham Gar­dens.

“The de­fen­dant pri­ori­tis­es jobs ac­cord­ing to the or­der in which the re­ports are made or the sever­i­ty of the job. In this in­stance, WASA was man­dat­ed to at­tend to the Beetham Gar­dens re­pairs which had to take pri­or­i­ty as the trunk main had col­lapsed,” Cob­ham said.

He con­firmed that the over­flow was most like­ly due to WASA’s faulty sew­er pipeline.

“Based on my 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, I be­lieve that it is pos­si­ble that the claimant’s line at the point of con­nec­tion be­came dam­aged due to the de­fen­dant’s aged main and the ef­fect of the sew­er gas­es over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od,” Cob­ham said.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Ed­wards’ lawyer Javier For­rester, Cob­ham ex­plained that the lifes­pan of sew­er lines could be af­fect­ed by an in­crease in the pop­u­la­tion of an area and the in­tro­duc­tion of restau­rants.

He said he and his col­leagues pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly check on the sew­er pipelines but ad­mit­ted that WASA did not have a pro­ce­dure for chang­ing main­te­nance sched­ules based on pop­u­la­tion in­creas­es.