Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has as­sured res­i­dents of Ker­na­ham Trace, Cunu­pia, that their years-long wa­ter sup­ply prob­lems will soon be re­solved.

The as­sur­ance was giv­en af­ter the res­i­dents staged a fiery protest along the Chin Chin Road ear­ly yes­ter­day. They were sub­se­quent­ly pro­vid­ed with truck-borne wa­ter. How­ev­er one of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, Me­shach Ryan said the com­mu­ni­ty wants wa­ter in their pipes.

“We have no wa­ter! Ten years, fif­teen years we not get­ting wa­ter in we taps, WASA you leave we with no choice. This is what we have to do. Meh peo­ple come out and we are stand­ing be­cause we need wa­ter. We don’t want no truck borne wa­ter we want wa­ter in we lines,” he de­clared.

Dur­ing the protest, po­lice ar­rest­ed a man who was caught throw­ing de­bris on the road af­ter a fire set with mat­tress­es and pieces of wood had been ex­tin­guished. He is ex­pect­ed to be charged with re­sist­ing ar­rest and ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Po­lice had to pep­per-spray res­i­dents who tried to in­ter­vene when the man was be­ing ar­rest­ed.

Res­i­dents com­plained while they have been strug­gling to get wa­ter, neigh­bour­ing streets had a steady sup­ply.

WASA ex­plained that the com­mu­ni­ty is ser­viced by the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant while sur­round­ing ar­eas get wa­ter from the Las Lo­mas Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant. How­ev­er, there is low pres­sure or no wa­ter be­cause the com­mu­ni­ty is on the ex­trem­i­ties of the plant’s ser­vice area.

“In recog­ni­tion of the is­sues fac­ing cus­tomers in this area, WASA is tak­ing steps to im­prove the lev­el of ser­vice. An in­ter­con­nec­tion to the Las Lo­mas pipeline will be made in the com­ing days which will aug­ment the sup­ply to cus­tomers ser­viced by the Ca­roni sys­tem. The Au­thor­i­ty is al­so cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out re­fur­bish­ment works on its Las Lo­mas Well #2, which, when com­plet­ed by the end of March, will add ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400, 000 gal­lons of wa­ter per day to the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.”

WASA said this up­grade is ex­pect­ed to im­prove the ser­vice to Ker­na­ham Trace and sur­round­ing ar­eas.