Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

For three con­sec­u­tive days, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250,000 cus­tomers in north Trinidad have had no wa­ter due to a bro­ken main at the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant. This is ac­cord­ing to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) who have been con­duct­ing re­pairs since the pipe rup­tured on  Tues­day.

Amongst the thou­sands of af­fect­ed cus­tomers were home­own­ers and many Port-of-Spain busi­ness own­ers. Peo­ple from Orop­une Gar­dens, Curepe, Val­sayn, St Joseph, Mt Hope, San Juan, San­ta Cruz, Barataria, Mor­vant, Port-of-Spain, St James, Co­corite, and Cas­cade are among the ar­eas af­fect­ed, ac­cord­ing to WASA.

In a re­lease, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants’ As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud re­buked WASA and not­ed that stores in down­town Port-of-Spain had to close up for the day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Aboud said he could not give an ex­act fig­ure for the af­fect­ed busi­ness­es how­ev­er, there were many com­plaints.

 “We have had calls from a wide cross-sec­tion of Port-of-Spain; Char­lotte Street, Aber­crom­by Street, Duke Street, lots of dif­fer­ent ar­eas of Port-of-Spain where the pro­longed ab­sence of a sup­ply of wa­ter in the WASA line has led to many busi­ness­es hav­ing ex­haust­ed their tank sup­ply,” he said.

He said al­though they en­cour­aged the busi­ness own­ers to pur­chase truck-borne wa­ter, the sup­ply was lim­it­ed since so many ar­eas were af­fect­ed.

Aboud said he was not sure how long the busi­ness­es would be able to en­dure this sit­u­a­tion.

When Guardian Me­dia walked around down­town Port-of-Spain dur­ing the af­ter­noon pe­ri­od, the streets were al­most emp­ty and some food places were closed.

Be­yond BBQ, at the cor­ner of Queen and Aber­crom­by Streets, dis­played signs stat­ing that they were closed due to not hav­ing wa­ter. The own­er of a bak­ery on Rich­mond Street said she was us­ing a tank, but the wa­ter pres­sure was not strong enough to last an­oth­er day.

How­ev­er, some busi­ness­es were not bad­ly af­fect­ed. Own­er of New Cre­ation Cafe on Ed­ward Street, Cameron So­han, from Cou­va, said they did not have any dis­rup­tions in their wa­ter sup­ply.

“We have wa­ter. I fig­ure it’s be­cause we have tanks in the build­ing or on the roof. So, we have had a con­sis­tent sup­ply,” he said.

When Guardian Me­dia in­formed him that oth­er busi­ness­es did not have wa­ter, So­han said that ex­plained why they had so many cus­tomers that day.

Al­though WASA said cus­tomers should have wa­ter by 4 pm yes­ter­day, many peo­ple on so­cial me­dia com­plained that wa­ter did not re­turn.

WASA sent an up­date at 6 pm yes­ter­day stat­ing that the re­pairs were com­plet­ed and they would be restart­ing op­er­a­tions to re­store the trans­mis­sion sys­tem.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia ear­li­er yes­ter­day, WASA’s act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main ex­plained the rea­son for the de­lay since the rup­ture oc­curred.

“We would have ex­pe­ri­enced a rup­ture on a pipeline that ac­tu­al­ly goes to­wards one of our tanks on the north line of our Ca­roni wa­ter treat­ment plant… Based on the ini­tial as­sess­ment, we did be­lieve that we could have re­paired the line much soon­er. How­ev­er, with fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions, we re­alised that we need­ed to do more work, in terms of se­cur­ing the line. So, the line in ques­tion that rup­tured was a bit of a unique size, and we had to do some fab­ri­ca­tion. It was more tech­ni­cal than we ex­pect­ed,” he said.

Ro­main said that once the re­pairs are done, with­in 24 to 48 hours the wa­ter sup­ply should re­turn to nor­mal­cy. He al­so urged cit­i­zens to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly, once the wa­ter re­turns.

“We ex­pect to see some dis­coloura­tion in the wa­ter sup­ply, no need to pan­ic, that would have hap­pened as the line went dry. I would ad­vise the cus­tomers to have their lines run­ning. We on our side would be flush­ing our sys­tem as well,” he said.

T&T Cham­ber wants more prac­ti­cal and long-term so­lu­tions

Mean­while, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Stephen de Gannes, called on the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to pro­vide more prac­ti­cal and long-term so­lu­tions for this is­sue.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that oc­cur­rences of this na­ture con­tin­ue to af­fect the na­tion as fre­quent­ly as this and that nor­mal busi­ness op­er­a­tions are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by a lack of this vi­tal re­source,” he said.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, and the pri­vate sec­tor, re­main will­ing to en­gage in dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties on mat­ters like these that af­fect the earn­ings, health, and safe­ty of so many of our pop­u­la­tion.”