Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has start­ed re­plac­ing the Ca­roni Trans­mis­sion Pipeline that rup­tured last week leav­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250,000 cus­tomers with­out a wa­ter sup­ply.

This was con­firmed by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les who said while re­pair works were com­plet­ed on the old pipeline, it will be de­com­mis­sioned when the new one is con­struct­ed to avoid a re­cur­rence.

“The up­date is that the plant is now back in­to full op­er­a­tion, the North trans­mis­sion Sys­tem is back in­to full op­er­a­tion,” Gon­za­les said. “That by­pass line has al­ready start­ed con­struc­tion and is due in sev­en days,” he added.

Gon­za­les, who spoke at the com­mis­sion­ing of the Gold­en Grove Boost­er Sta­tion in Arou­ca yes­ter­day, said the ma­te­r­i­al used for the old pipeline could not be found lo­cal­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and WASA en­gi­neers were tasked with a dif­fi­cult fix.

“That line that was com­pro­mised is an old con­crete line that was con­struct­ed in the late 1970s or ear­ly 80s and WASA no longer makes those lines” he ex­plained.

Gon­za­les said the en­gi­neers had to de­vise a fix by get­ting steel line to go on the con­crete line, put flanges on both sides, and use the ma­te­r­i­al to seal steel on­to con­crete.

“So it was fraught with a lot of is­sues from the start,” he said.

Gon­za­les said WASA was ad­vised to aban­don the line and start a new one but did not want to leave cus­tomers with­out wa­ter for a longer pe­ri­od. The re­pairs were com­plet­ed in three days and, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, most of the af­fect­ed cus­tomers start­ed re­ceiv­ing their sup­ply by yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“Sup­ply­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 im­pe­r­i­al mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter, to North Trinidad,” he said.

“Bel­mont, St Barbs, Gon­za­les area they are on the ex­trem­i­ties of the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem…Let me tell you how it works right, you send that wa­ter from the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, it goes through Val­sayn A, Val­sayn B, then to El So­cor­ro Boost­er, it is sent up to the reser­voir to Pic­ton and Pic­ton one, Pic­ton two tanks, then the Laven­tille reser­voir sends to Bel­mont, it goes all the way down to the Wright­son Road and Co­corite,” Gon­za­les added on how wa­ter is sent from the Ca­roni Boost­er Sta­tion.

In Bel­mont, one of the af­fect­ed ar­eas, res­i­dent Wen­dell De Fre­itas con­firmed that a pipe borne sup­ply had bee re­stored. Rsi­dents of Cum­ber­batch Street in Bel­mont al­so con­firmed that they be­gan re­ceiv­ing a wa­ter sup­ply on Mon­day evening.

Port-of-Spain busi­ness­es have al­so re­turned to a lev­el of nor­mal­cy.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said: “As far as we know, there have been no re­port of any one not hav­ing wa­ter at this time. The pres­sure is not ro­bust, but the sup­ply is ad­e­quate enough.”

Aranguez busi­ness­man Christo­pher Fer­ri­era, own­er of Epic Print­ing Sup­plies, told Guardian Me­dia the wa­ter sup­ply re­turned on Mon­day.

Gon­za­les said the pipeline rup­tured dur­ing cel­e­bra­tions of Car­i­om’s 50th An­niver­sary at the Hy­att Re­gency Port of Spain last week and WASA work­ers had to en­sure that ho­tels and sur­round­ing schools and hos­pi­tals had a wa­ter sup­ply.

“All of these things hap­pened in the back­ground be­cause of the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the work­ers and that is the rea­son why I thought that de­spite the chal­lenges, there were chal­lenges that the team man­aged re­al­ly well,” he said.

Gon­za­les said close to 11,000 peo­ple will ben­e­fit from the com­mis­sion­ing of the Gold­en Grove Boost­er Sta­tion. and the sup­ply will in­crease from six hours, three days a week to 12 hours for the same amount of days.

Lau­rel Hill res­i­dent An­na Charles said she was thank­ful for the in­creased sup­ply but wants WASA to work on the wa­ter qual­i­ty.