The brown­ish wa­ter flow­ing through the taps of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) cus­tomers in North and South Trinidad is caused by an ex­ten­sive valve change-out ex­er­cise dur­ing the shut­down of the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant on Sun­day last.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, WASA says the plant was tak­en out of ser­vice to fa­cil­i­tate a re­quest by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to car­ry out up­grade work on its sub­sta­tion lo­cat­ed at the plant.The rein­tro­duc­tion of sup­ply in­to the sys­tem led to scour­ing along the trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion mains re­sult­ing in the tem­po­rary dis­col­oration of the wa­ter.

WASA gives the as­sur­ance the wa­ter qual­i­ty will im­prove as the sys­tem be­comes ful­ly utilised.Giv­en the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion, cus­tomers are be­ing ad­vised to al­low the wa­ter to set­tle be­fore putting to use.WASA used the pe­ri­od of the planned dis­rup­tion to con­duct re­pair/re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works aimed at im­prov­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the sup­ply to cus­tomers sys­tem wide, at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing:

-Grand Bazaar - Re­place­ment of two 12" Con­trol valves

-Flow Con­trol Trinci­ty – Re­place­ment of two 12" valves; in­stal­la­tion of two 12" off take valves

-Mendez Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs - Re­place­ment of two 8" Washout valves

-Chart House, West­moor­ings – Re­place­ment of a 12" valve)

-St. James Bar­racks - Re­pair 18" Washout and in­stal­la­tion of a 4" air valve

-Hinkin – Re­place­ment of Two (2) 8" valves

-Scale Yard, Jern­ing­ham Road - Re­place­ment of Two (2) 12" valves

-Wya­by Off­take - Re­place­ment of two 12" valves

-Clax­ton Bay - In­stal­la­tion of a new 8" valve

These works will re­sult in an im­prove­ment in ser­vice to cus­tomers as well as de­crease the lev­el of un­ac­count­ed for wa­ter (leak­age) and im­prove wa­ter qual­i­ty.