In Ju­ly last year I came home to dis­cov­er that my wa­ter reser­voirs were emp­ty of drink­ing wa­ter. It took me four days via a route that in­volved a se­ries of com­plaints to all the rel­e­vant agen­cies. Three days lat­er a truck-borne dis­trib­u­tor ar­rived. I was sat­is­fied that I got the sys­tem to work with­out greas­ing any­one's hands. And if it could work for me then maybe it could work for oth­ers who do not know any­one in au­thor­i­ty.

Dur­ing the long drought of this 2016 my house­hold fi­nal­ly suc­cumbed to the long dry spell and di­min­ished sup­plies which WASA claimed in a press re­lease is im­pact­ed by the worst El Ni­no in 50 years.

For nine days I have had no truck borne wa­ter, and the last pipe borne wa­ter at pres­sures ca­pa­ble of fill­ing the tanks came on March 16, 2016. Par for the course you might think. In the mean­time trucks have been ply­ing a brisk trade in that part of the val­ley where I live.I en­quired and was told this is pri­vate wa­ter ser­vice.

Where is your reser­voir or dam? I asked. The re­ply was that he did not have any.

The price I was told is sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars a truck load. I have not ver­i­fied it my­self. This is a case of prof­it from pow­er of con­trol over wa­ter re­sources or prefer­ably, over ac­cess to those re­sources. It is tak­ing place qui­et­ly un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of a gov­ern­ment that pledged a re­turn to de­cent gov­er­nance.

Some res­i­dents are hold­ing their noses, and are pay­ing twice for scarci­ty from the drought of wa­ter, for which we should all be held ac­count­able. I am ask­ing for an in­ter­ven­tion by the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the head of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion, the Om­buds­man, the free press, and all de­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who re­side in Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph. Prof­its from pow­er should be out­lawed and not be al­lowed af­fect our en­joy­ment of wa­ter.

Lloyd Tay­lor,

Mara­cas Val­ley,

St Joseph