PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents in ar­eas that had pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed brown wa­ter flow­ing from their taps have con­firmed that the wa­ter is now run­ning clear.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia con­firmed with res­i­dents in Bel­mont, Wood­brook, St James and San Juan that the wa­ter en­ter­ing their homes ap­peared clean­er than pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed.

For the past week, sev­er­al res­i­dents in ar­eas in­clud­ing Diego Mar­tin, Port-of-Spain, St James, San­ta Cruz, Mt Hope, parts of Cen­tral Trinidad and as far south as Point Fortin had com­plained about brown wa­ter com­ing from their taps.

The is­sue prompt­ed a back-and-forth be­tween Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and his pre­de­ces­sor, Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who chal­lenged the Min­is­ter to drink the wa­ter af­ter Padarath as­sured the pub­lic that the wa­ter from their taps was safe to drink.

Padarath sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed Gon­za­les’ as­ser­tions that there had been a dis­rup­tion in the sup­ply of chem­i­cals used to treat wa­ter across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said it was tak­ing im­me­di­ate and sus­tained ac­tion to ad­dress re­ports of dis­coloured wa­ter af­fect­ing cus­tomers in some ar­eas.

WASA had al­so post­ed a video on its so­cial me­dia pages ex­plain­ing that the wa­ter could be­come dis­coloured when flow­ing wa­ter moved sed­i­ment in pipelines lead­ing to cus­tomers’ homes.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed WASA yes­ter­day for com­ment on the re­turn of clear wa­ter to the af­fect­ed ar­eas but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.