The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has moved to ad­dress on­go­ing wa­ter sup­ply dis­rup­tions in Cas­tara, To­ba­go, fol­low­ing a protest by res­i­dents yes­ter­day morn­ing over the pro­longed sit­u­a­tion.

The Au­thor­i­ty said it has de­ployed two wa­ter trucks to serve af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties in North­side, To­ba­go, while ur­gent leak re­pair works con­tin­ue in Cas­tara and Par­latu­vi­er, with com­ple­tion ex­pect­ed by last night.

Based on op­er­a­tional re­ports, cus­tomers in high-el­e­va­tion ar­eas—par­tic­u­lar­ly the Cas­tara Hous­ing Scheme—have been with­out a con­sis­tent pipe-borne sup­ply for over a week due to mul­ti­ple leaks along the trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work be­tween the Bloody Bay Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant and the Cas­tara com­mu­ni­ty.

WASA said one of the leaks, which had re­duced wa­ter pres­sure, was re­paired on Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, elec­tri­cal and me­chan­i­cal is­sues at Bloody Bay Well 1, which be­gan on Mon­day, have con­tin­ued to af­fect sup­ply. Restora­tion was es­ti­mat­ed for 2 am to­day. The Au­thor­i­ty said it un­der­stands the frus­tra­tion of res­i­dents and is work­ing to sta­bilise the sys­tem and re­store nor­mal sup­ply as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. It added that its Cus­tomer Re­sponse Unit and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions teams are on the ground en­gag­ing res­i­dents and pro­vid­ing up­dates.

Cas­tara Vil­lage Coun­cil PRO Ju­vani Thomas said while he un­der­stands res­i­dents’ frus­tra­tions, he does not ful­ly sup­port the protest ac­tion. “It’s not some­thing I can ful­ly con­done be­cause you nev­er know peo­ple may have emer­gen­cies or need to catch a flight. But again, it boils down to who is feel­ing the pres­sure, and if vil­lagers feel this is the on­ly way they are be­ing heard, then I guess they took the ac­tion they need­ed,” he said.

Thomas said wa­ter short­ages have been on­go­ing and are af­fect­ing dai­ly life and key sec­tors.

“We’ve been hav­ing wa­ter is­sues for the past two weeks, which re­sult­ed in this morn­ing’s ac­tion. Pri­or to that, it has been hap­pen­ing fre­quent­ly,” he said.

He added that the dis­rup­tion is im­pact­ing tourism, fish­ing and agri­cul­ture. “It af­fects us in the tourism in­dus­try, the fish­ing in­dus­try and agri­cul­ture as well, be­cause when we don’t have wa­ter it af­fects ba­sic san­i­ta­tion, whether in homes or ho­tels,” he said.

Thomas al­so called on util­i­ty providers to im­prove their re­sponse to re­cur­ring dis­rup­tions af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.