Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing du­alling the Ca­roni South Trunk wa­ter main since its poor con­di­tion is af­fect­ing the vol­ume of wa­ter reach­ing con­sumers, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George has in­di­cat­ed.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on an or­der to in­crease Pt Lisas' com­pa­nies wa­ter rates, George said du­alling the line will al­so in­crease the Pt Lisas sup­ply.

George not­ed that the main cur­rent­ly has more leaks caus­ing loss of a "con­sid­er­able" amount of wa­ter.He said the main burst in 1999 and WASA con­se­quent­ly treats the main gin­ger­ly and does not send as much wa­ter down the line as it is rat­ed to do.George al­so not­ed that 224 struc­tures-from homes and busi­ness­es to a church and kinder­garten - are built along the line.

"If it bursts it can cause se­vere dis­rup­tion and can be life threat­en­ing. I want to alert the peo­ple who have tak­en up res­i­dence there that they are ex­pos­ing them­selves to a great dan­ger," George added.He said the lo­ca­tion of those struc­tures al­so ham­pers WASA's ac­cess to the line to ef­fect re­pair when nec­es­sary. (GA)