The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has re­stat­ed its le­gal po­si­tion and claim of own­er­ship of Co­corite lands. This was in re­sponse to a news con­fer­ence by Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing on Mon­day. Dur­ing that brief­ing Lee Sing claimed the land, which he called the Co­corite Farm­lands, be­longed to the city of Port-of-Spain. He re­fut­ed claims by WASA that it held own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty due to the pres­ence of wells. WASA, in a news re­lease, said the prop­er­ty, which the util­i­ty has named the Co­corite Far­rell Well Fields, com­prised of 35 arte­sian wells which at its peak pro­duced two mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter a day.

The re­lease quot­ed Sec­tion 11 of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Act of 1965, which states: "All land and oth­er prop­er­ty of every kind, in­clud­ing things in ac­tion, vest­ed or deemed vest­ed im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore the com­mence­ment of this part in the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion, un­der the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion Or­di­nance or by any oth­er right or ti­tle and re­lat­ing to wa­ter­works (with­in the mean­ing of Sec­tion 40) or the ex­ist­ing sew­er­age sys­tems, is here­by vest­ed in the au­thor­i­ty." The re­lease fur­ther states that any wa­ter pro­duc­tion or sew­er­age fa­cil­i­ty owned by the Port-of-Spain City Coun­cil or any oth­er state en­ti­ty was vest­ed in the au­thor­i­ty by statu­to­ry con­veyance pur­suant to Sec­tion 11 of the Act.