Traf­fic backed up for miles on Sad­dle Road, Low­er San­ta Cruz, as res­i­dents of Febeau Dis­trict blocked the road with burn­ing tyres and met­al ob­jects from 5 am on Wednes­day to protest the lack of pipe-borne wa­ter. Riv­er Road and Fer­nville res­i­dents al­so joined the protest near the en­trance of the San Juan North Sec­ondary School, Bourg Mu­la­tresse. How­ev­er WASA re­spond­ed quick­ly to the plight of the res­i­dents and re­stored their sup­ply.

As tem­pers flared the res­i­dents chant­ed : "We tired of the same thing over and over." Mar­sha Wright of Riv­er Road said she had no ac­cess to a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter for the last two months. "It have a pump­ing sta­tion about two kilo­me­tres from here. There is al­so a reser­voir col­lect­ing wa­ter and WASA just com­ing and check­ing and go­ing," she said. She added that be­cause of the de­plorable con­di­tions of the road where she lives she was un­able to get trucks to come up and de­liv­er wa­ter.

A stu­dent of San Juan North Sec­ondary School said school was dis­missed ear­ly on many oc­ca­sions be­cause there was no wa­ter. Win­ston Al­mar­ales, sys­tems su­per­vi­sor of the North West Re­gion of WASA, which is re­spon­si­ble for Bourg Mu­la­tresse, Quar­ry Road, San Juan Old Road and en­vi­rons said he was on va­ca­tion and re­alised how dire the sit­u­a­tion had be­come on­ly when a res­i­dent con­tact­ed him.

Al­mar­ales said he went to check the pump­ing sta­tion and saw that the tanks where wa­ter is stored for the area had a block­age in one of the pipelines there­by re­duc­ing the wa­ter sup­ply. Al­mar­ales as­sured the pro­test­ers that he would work to have the prob­lem re­solved.

Coun­cil­lor for the area Roger "Zoff" Ce­les­tine said wa­ter trucks had come in­to the area to try and pro­vide wa­ter for the res­i­dents but they were still scep­ti­cal and would not be leav­ing the protest un­less they were ab­solute­ly sure that the prob­lem had been solved. He said the sit­u­a­tion had been con­tin­u­ing for months. Ce­les­tine said it hurt his heart to know that se­nior cit­i­zens had to pay peo­ple to de­liv­er wa­ter and that many chil­dren in the area could not at­tend school.

"I can't sleep be­cause I know the peo­ple un­der pres­sure. I mean just for wa­ter in San­ta Cruz peo­ple have to reach to this? Over two weeks now peo­ple can't wash their wares, they can't flush their toi­lets," he said. In an e-mail mes­sage to the T&T Guardian, Daniel Plen­ty, man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at WASA, said a truck­borne sup­ply was be­ing made avail­able to all af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

"Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty ad­vis­es cus­tomers from Riv­er Road and Fer­nville in the Grand Cu­ru­caye, low­er San­ta Cruz area who have been re­ceiv­ing an in­ter­mit­tent or re­duced wa­ter sup­ply that this is due to a sus­pect­ed re­strict­ed flow em­a­nat­ing from the rur­al in­take that sup­plies the com­mu­ni­ty," he said. "A team from the au­thor­i­ty's Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion has been work­ing to iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic na­ture of the prob­lem in or­der to take the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tive ac­tion there­after."