Thou­sands of res­i­dents, busi­ness­es and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties have been left with­out a suf­fi­cient wa­ter sup­ply for the past sev­er­al days due to a leak­ing Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty trans­mis­sion pipe.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, cus­tomers in parts of North East Trinidad served by the North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant were im­pact­ed by a leak along the 42-inch trans­mis­sion pipeline in Va­len­cia.

WASA said the leak was caused by ero­sion and land slip­page in the area af­ter re­cent rain­fall. A wa­ter sup­ply is ex­pect­ed to be re­turned to af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties by Fri­day.

Ar­eas af­fect­ed in­clude San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons, To­co Road, Man­zanil­la, Cu­mu­to, Waller­field, Tumpuna Road, Mal­abar, Brazil Vil­lage, La Hor­quet­ta, Cara­po, O’Meara Road, Mau­si­ca Road, Mal­oney Gar­dens, Five Rivers, Bon Air West, Orop­une Gar­dens.

How­ev­er, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) chair­man Anil Juter­am said yes­ter­day that he wants the wa­ter sup­ply to im­prove. He said the sup­ply to Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la and To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cies is so bad peo­ple are be­com­ing des­per­ate.

“Peo­ple are so des­per­ate right now that they’re ask­ing if they can get one day sup­ply just to full up their tanks so they can wash and cook and every­thing. We have pub­lic ser­vants who take loans and mort­gage their house to build up places like Al­li­son Park and Ve­ga de Oropouche and be­cause of the wa­ter sit­u­a­tion, they want to sell and come out of there you know.”

He said the cor­po­ra­tion can­not meet the de­mands for a truck-borne wa­ter sup­ply be­cause there’s on­ly one wa­ter truck cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion.

“We have about 40 squat­ting ar­eas from Va­len­cia to Matu­ra and we have to fur­nish all those peo­ple. In fact, some of our dri­vers are a bit threat­ened when they are go­ing in­to the squat­ting ar­eas be­cause peo­ple so des­per­ate for wa­ter they threat­en­ing the dri­vers. When they go­ing in there, they de­mand­ing who should get and who should not get. It’s a re­al wild, wild west sit­u­a­tion here in San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons,” he said.

Juter­am said he is hop­ing to meet Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said Juter­am and the MPs for To­co/San­gre Grande and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la are aware of Gov­ern­ment’s plans to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply.

“It is for that rea­son we are aim­ing to con­struct a wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty that can pro­vide the peo­ple in that area with ten im­pe­r­i­al mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter per day and to re­move its de­pen­dence on an al­ready stretched North Oropouche Sys­tem,” Gon­za­les said.

“In two weeks, we will be com­menc­ing some pipeline in­stal­la­tion in some squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties. These projects don’t hap­pen overnight. They take prop­er plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion and I am hap­py to say that hav­ing di­ag­nosed all the is­sues, we are well poised to com­mence our cap­i­tal projects to im­prove wa­ter sup­ply to all ar­eas of the coun­try.” he added.

Mean­while, WASA said a lim­it­ed truck-borne wa­ter ser­vice will be avail­able to af­fect­ed cus­tomers.