Deb­bie Ja­cob

?I guess you could call this Wa­ter Woes Part II. Wa­ter is spew­ing from the same pipe up the road that I wrote about a cou­ple of weeks ago and it is pour­ing down my street. There are leaks fur­ther up Syden­ham Av­enue as well. You would swear it was the rainy sea­son. There's that much wa­ter. I called WASA on Car­ni­val Tues­day. I guess I don't have to tell you how that worked out. I didn't have any bet­ter luck on Ash Wednes­day. I spent my Ash Wednes­day–day and night–on the phone, all to no avail. At 6.30 pm, a mir­a­cle hap­pened. I was dri­ving down the main road in St Ann's un­til I came to a pick­up truck that had stopped in front of me. I stopped, be­cause I couldn't see if ve­hi­cles were com­ing, on­ly to have a rude man shout at me and wave me on. I hap­pened to see a tiny WASA sign on the back of the truck just as he growled, "You can't stop there. We're fix­ing some­thing in the road."

I couldn't tell you what he was fix­ing in the road be­cause I didn't see a leak. I ig­nored his rude­ness and said, "I have been call­ing and call­ing about a leak up on Syden­ham Av­enue." I didn't have to say any­thing more. He told me where the leak was and then, much to my sur­prise, he said, "I was just there, and that leak be­longs to ----" He tried to tell me that the leak in the road be­longed to a house on the oth­er side of the road. He even told me the per­son's name. "They'll have to fix it," the WASA guy said. "WASA is not mak­ing joke with peo­ple wast­ing wa­ter any­more." That would be laugh­able if the sit­u­a­tion wasn't so se­ri­ous and if WASA took the leaks they should be re­pair­ing more se­ri­ous­ly. I fled the scene be­cause that WASA guy was scary mean. Af­ter I left, I wished I had been braver. I should have asked him how a leak in the road can be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a res­i­dent.

Maybe I am dotish, but it seems to me that leaks in the road are or should be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of WASA. Aren't peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for leaks in their own yards? And what about the fact there's been a leak in that very same spot for the last 21 years, long be­fore that par­tic­u­lar place the WASA guy is blam­ing the leak on was even built? And even if the WASA guy's ac­cu­sa­tions were true, why would WASA walk away from a pipe gush­ing wa­ter in­to the air? Why wouldn't they fix it? The two WASA guys ac­tu­al­ly came to the leak, stood up in the road, watched the leak in the road and de­cid­ed it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a res­i­dent, and they weren't go­ing to do any­thing about it. Even though this made no sense to me, I de­cid­ed to tell the per­son WASA blamed for the bro­ken pipe. I de­cid­ed to do that be­cause he told me the per­son would get charged. I didn't think I should keep in­for­ma­tion like that to my­self even though it made no sense.

So I went back home, called out the per­son WASA said should fix the pipe and told him every­thing the guy said. His re­sponse was "Why are you telling me this?" I sup­pose that is a good ques­tion. Need­less to say his tone was not a hap­py one. Me and my puz­zled self an­swered, "I'm telling you be­cause noth­ing about this leak makes any sense to me. We live in a neigh­bour­hood and we have to find so­lu­tions to our prob­lems. A pipe spew­ing wa­ter for over 20 years is a prob­lem." (I'm not sure if I said this or was just think­ing this). I did say, "We have to fig­ure out the pol­i­tics of this leak thing. This can't go on." This can't go on be­cause the del­uge from the bust­ed pipe is erod­ing the road. This can't go on be­cause tons of wa­ter have been wast­ed over 21 years. This can't go on be­cause I am men­tal­ly ex­haust­ed and hope­less­ly sad from see­ing so much wa­ter wast­ing.

I don't un­der­stand why a pipe can't be fixed and why WASA can't find a so­lu­tion to this prob­lem and fix all the bust­ed pipes in Trinidad in a time­ly man­ner. I don't un­der­stand why a pipe is ly­ing on top of the ground in­stead of un­der the ground, and why peo­ple keep throw­ing dirt or grav­el on top of it like that is a so­lu­tion to the prob­lem. I am get­ting more and more con­fused and dis­en­chant­ed about this pipe, which has come to sym­bol­ise all the bro­ken pipes in T&T to me. The way the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing han­dled makes me se­ri­ous­ly ques­tion the way things are han­dled in gen­er­al in Trinidad. The pass-the-buck pol­i­cy just gets every­one nowhere. Noth­ing gets done. Noth­ing gets fixed. And re­sources are wast­ing.