The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has giv­en no­tice of its in­ten­tion to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion and to im­pose all avail­able penal­ties and fines against any­one or en­ti­ty who en­gage in the unau­tho­rised sup­ply of wa­ter to con­sumers. The util­i­ty said that was a clear con­tra­ven­tion of the au­thor­i­ty's act.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, it said it took note of re­cent news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments and an out­door sign­board of­fer­ing the sup­ply of wa­ter for a fee. The re­lease said it was in­cum­bent up­on the au­thor­i­ty to bring pub­lic at­ten­tion to the law gov­ern­ing the sup­ply of wa­ter with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the per­son and or en­ti­ty en­gaged in the unau­tho­rised sup­ply of wa­ter.

The re­lease, how­ev­er, said there ex­ist­ed an ex­cep­tion to the rule that could be ap­plied to the Fire Ser­vices, the mu­nic­i­pal/re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions or an au­tho­rised pri­vate con­trac­tor in cas­es of emer­gency or ne­ces­si­ty. In these spe­cial sit­u­a­tions sup­ply would be ob­tained by the Fire Ser­vices, via its hy­drants or at wa­ter truck­ing fill­ing bays, un­der the man­age­ment and con­trol of the au­thor­i­ty, the state­ment added.

The state­ment said the au­thor­i­ty had nei­ther grant­ed, con­sent­ed nor au­tho­rised any per­son or en­ti­ty, oth­er than those specif­i­cal­ly re­ferred to, to sup­ply wa­ter to pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als or busi­ness­es at a price, termed a "de­liv­ery fee" which could amount to as much as $700.

The re­lease said the law fur­ther pro­vid­ed if any own­er or oc­cu­pi­er of premis­es sup­plied with wa­ter by the au­thor­i­ty, with­out con­sent, sup­plies or wil­ful­ly per­mit­ted an­oth­er per­son to take any of that wa­ter for use in oth­er premis­es such per­sons would be li­able to a fine.