Khara Per­sad

Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh says the cost of re­pair­ing the rup­tured wa­ter main in Trinci­ty is still un­known, and will prob­a­bly be re­leased by next Mon­day.Singh, who ini­tial­ly said the es­ti­mate would be ready by yes­ter­day, said the fig­ure would be worked out over the week­end and sent to the Min­istry of Works.

On Thurs­day, at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Singh said con­trac­tor Ju­nior Sam­my (Jusam­co) com­mit­ted a breach which re­sult­ed in a rup­tured 48-inch steel main off the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, near Trinci­ty Mall, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.The in­ci­dent hap­pened while the con­trac­tor was re­pair­ing and widen­ing a bridge as part of an over­all high­way ex­pan­sion project.Singh quot­ed a project en­gi­neer as say­ing that "a spe­cif­ic zone was iden­ti­fied for the con­trac­tor to op­er­ate with­in, but this area was breached."

Jusam­co, how­ev­er, has sought to blame the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), say­ing the au­thor­i­ty had failed to place mark­ers on the job site.In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Singh said be­cause it was an emer­gency, as more than 400,000 peo­ple were af­fect­ed, WASA had had to start re­pairs im­me­di­ate­ly.He said the over­all re­pair cost would be com­put­ed and then put for­ward. He com­mend­ed WASA for re­pair­ing the main so quick­ly.

"I want to con­grat­u­late the WASA crew, they did it with­in record time," he said.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, WASA main­tained that there were vis­i­ble mark­ers on the site. The re­lease said there were sev­er­al valve and ap­pur­te­nance cham­bers with the Jusam­co job site in the fore­ground.

"These clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able cham­bers are used by WASA per­son­nel to ac­cess air valves, op­er­ate con­trol valves and mon­i­tor pres­sures and flows along its trans­mis­sion sys­tem. They are clear in­di­ca­tions of WASA's un­der­ground pipeline in­fra­struc­ture which can be found through­out the coun­try and which are eas­i­ly recog­nis­able by or­di­nary cit­i­zens," the state­ment said.The re­lease said oth­er than the many valve and ap­pur­te­nance cham­bers in the area, the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Flow Con­trol Sta­tion was lo­cat­ed near­by.