Brent Zephyrine

Close to 200,000 res­i­dents in Cen­tral and South Trinidad were with­out wa­ter Mon­day af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly three mil­lion of gal­lons of potable wa­ter was lost due to the theft of a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) air valve from the util­i­ty's Ca­roni/South trans­mis­sion main, Ch­agua­nas.This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Ellen Lewis, gen­er­al man­ag­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at WASA. She ex­plained that the air valve was used to re­move "air locks" from the sys­tem to fa­cil­i­tate "smooth trans­mis­sion of wa­ter. "Scrap iron and met­al thieves re­moved an eight-inch air valve di­rect­ly off the 54-inch Ca­roni/South trans­mis­sion main, in the vicin­i­ty of Per­se­ver­ance, Ch­agua­nas," she said. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way and WASA was urg­ing scrap and met­al deal­ers to de­sist from "in­ter­fer­ing with or steal­ing the util­i­ty's pipeline in­fra­struc­ture." The af­fect­ed trans­mis­sion main trans­mits 43 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter a day and is the largest in the net­work, Lewis said.

She added that while "full nor­mal­i­sa­tion in sup­ply will take place over a 24-hour pe­ri­od," due to the sys­tem of wa­ter sched­ul­ing and the re­mote­ness of some com­mu­ni­ties at the ex­trem­i­ties of the sys­tem, there may be some de­lay in the com­ple­tion of re­pairs. Lewis said: "There are some ar­eas that will get wa­ter im­me­di­ate­ly, based on where you are, but gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, every­body will have their wa­ter re­stored with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od. "Once cus­tomers are not get­ting the sup­ply with­in that pe­ri­od we en­cour­age our con­sumers to call us. "Truck-borne wa­ter is al­ways an op­tion in the ab­sence of wa­ter be­ing de­liv­ered to you via the pipeline sys­tem."

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Ar­eas af­fect­ed are:

Clax­ton Bay, Es­per­ance, Macaulay, Debe, Caratal, Pe­nal, Her­mitage, Wood­land, Soledad, South Oropouche, Union Road, Rousil­lac, San Fer­nan­do prop­er and en­vi­rons, La Brea, Gulf View, Sobo, Dun­can Vil­lage, Vance Riv­er, Pleas­antville, Ves­signy, Union Hall, Av­o­cat, La Ro­maine, Fyz­abad, Palmiste, Siparia, Sunkist, Quar­ry Vil­lage, Phillip­ine, San­ta Flo­ra and Pa­lo Seco.