The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has con­firmed that in­de­pen­dent test­ing is be­ing car­ried out to de­ter­mine the qual­i­ty and safe­ty of the wa­ter be­ing sup­plied to the Mara­cas Val­ley area.

WASA re­leased a state­ment ear­li­er to­day, in­di­cat­ing that oth­er tests have shown neg­a­tive for some con­t­a­m­i­nants, but fur­ther test­ing is be­ing car­ried out by an in­de­pen­dent lab.

“The Au­thor­i­ty ad­vis­es cus­tomers in the Mara­cas Val­ley area that notwith­stand­ing the safe re­sults ob­tained from in­ter­nal tests on the wa­ter sup­ply to the area, an in­de­pen­dent lab has al­so been en­gaged to con­duct fur­ther tests, in or­der to ver­i­fy the qual­i­ty of the sup­ply be­ing pro­duced and dis­trib­uted to Mara­cas Val­ley,” WASA said in its re­lease.

It re­port­ed: “The Au­thor­i­ty's tests, which now in­cludes bac­te­r­i­al tests, are neg­a­tive.”

Notwith­stand­ing, WASA is ad­vis­ing cus­tomers to take ex­tra pre­cau­tions for peace of mind:

“How­ev­er, if cus­tomers are of the view that their wa­ter sup­ply may be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, in the in­ter­im—and as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure—cus­tomers can boil wa­ter that is to be used for drink­ing pur­pos­es.”

WASA’s as­sur­ances come on the heels of those made by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.  The Min­is­ter was moved to calm fears over the qual­i­ty of Mara­cas Val­ley’s wa­ter sup­ply fol­low­ing a health-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC). 

USC had is­sued a state­ment claim­ing that sev­er­al stu­dents, as well as aca­d­e­m­ic staff, had ex­pe­ri­enced bouts of vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhoea through­out Fri­day and Sat­ur­day.

Min­is­ter Gon­za­les had said tests done on var­i­ous sam­ples tak­en from the Llu­en­go Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Mara­cas-St Joseph, that serves the catch­ment area, re­vealed, “That there was ab­solute­ly no con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the wa­ter … It re­mained con­sis­tent with WHO stan­dards.”