The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has at­trib­uted wa­ter sup­ply chal­lenges af­fect­ing res­i­dents of Olton Road, Ari­ma, to re­duced pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty at the Hol­lis Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (WTP) and lim­i­ta­tions with­in the ex­ist­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to res­i­dents’ com­plaints about wors­en­ing wa­ter short­ages, WASA said the east­ern sec­tion of Olton Trace re­mained par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to re­duced pres­sure and in­ad­e­quate wa­ter de­liv­ery be­cause of the con­di­tion, size and con­fig­u­ra­tion of its ex­ist­ing pipelines.

The au­thor­i­ty said the west­ern sec­tion gen­er­al­ly ben­e­fit­ed from a more favourable dis­tri­b­u­tion arrange­ment.

WASA’s re­sponse fol­lows a Guardian Me­dia vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty on Sun­day, where res­i­dents de­scribed in­creas­ing­ly un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply over the past year.

Res­i­dents said the short­ages had forced them to car­ry wa­ter from oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, in­stall stor­age tanks and pumps, and scale back house­hold rou­tines and busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Some al­so al­leged that the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in sup­ply amount­ed to po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, claim­ing the sit­u­a­tion had wors­ened since the gen­er­al elec­tion.

How­ev­er, WASA yes­ter­day said its North East Dis­tri­b­u­tion Team con­tin­ued to man­age the avail­able wa­ter sup­ply in ac­cor­dance with pre­vail­ing pro­duc­tion lev­els and dis­tri­b­u­tion re­quire­ments.

The au­thor­i­ty’s state­ment did not out­line a time­line for im­prove­ments to the sup­ply or in­di­cate whether up­grades to the ex­ist­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture were planned.