Un­ex­pect­ed de­lays in the com­ple­tion of wa­ter main works along the St Ann's Riv­er, Sea Lots, caused mas­sive traf­fic grid­lock for com­muters leav­ing Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.The project in­volved re­lo­cat­ing a 36-inch trans­mis­sion main along the Beetham High­way. The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), in a re­lease sent yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, said the work was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by mid­night on Sun­day but took longer than ex­pect­ed and was on­ly fin­ished al­most nine hours lat­er.

"The work­ers en­coun­tered com­pli­ca­tions dur­ing the project caus­ing it to be de­layed," WASA's head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ellen Lewis said.One of the is­sues Lewis iden­ti­fied was a Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) pipeline which runs along­side the wa­ter main.She said the wa­ter sup­ply to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in and around Port-of-Spain was par­tial­ly re­stored by 1 pm yes­ter­day and was ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly back to nor­mal by 6 pm.

The af­fect­ed ar­eas were down­town Port-of-Spain, Wood­brook, Cas­cade, St James, St Ann's, Co­corite, Bel­mont, Gon­za­les, Laven­tille, Mor­vant, Barataria and Aranguez.The un­usu­al traf­fic con­ges­tion be­gan short­ly af­ter mid­day and did not sub­side un­til late yes­ter­day evening. (DA)