Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents across sev­er­al San­ta Cruz com­mu­ni­ties are call­ing for the restora­tion of their wa­ter sup­ply and for clear­er, time­li­er up­dates from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) re­gard­ing on­go­ing ser­vice dis­rup­tions.

The calls come as res­i­dents claim they have en­dured se­vere in­ter­rup­tions to their wa­ter sup­ply over the past three weeks, sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ing their dai­ly lives.

In a post on WASA’s of­fi­cial Face­book page on Mon­day, the au­thor­i­ty no­ti­fied the pub­lic of an un­planned in­ter­rup­tion in ser­vice due to “emer­gency me­chan­i­cal re­pairs” at the San­ta Cruz Boost­er Sta­tion.

The post list­ed sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed by the re­pairs and stat­ed that the es­ti­mat­ed restora­tion time was May 23 at 8 pm.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al res­i­dents said the lat­est in­ter­rup­tion was on­ly one in a se­ries of re­cent dis­rup­tions and ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribed as vague com­mu­ni­ca­tion from WASA. They said clear­er and more di­rect up­dates would have helped res­i­dents bet­ter pre­pare.

Pax Vale res­i­dent Michael Nan­ton told Guardian Me­dia that prob­lems with main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent wa­ter sup­ply be­gan last year, but de­scribed the lat­est dis­rup­tion as the worst in re­cent times.

“The last two weeks have been the worst. Right now, those tanks are emp­ty,” Nan­ton said, ges­tur­ing to­wards the large tanks at his home.

He said that de­spite WASA’s ad­vi­sories, res­i­dents were still un­clear about the ex­act cause of the in­ter­rup­tions.

“We speak to them all the time. For the past cou­ple months they have been hav­ing break­downs, so we weren’t get­ting wa­ter reg­u­lar­ly, but this time around the ex­pla­na­tion was low pres­sure. I don’t know what they mean by low pres­sure, if they mean there is no wa­ter in the reser­voirs,” he said.

At sev­er­al prop­er­ties along Dove and Fal­con Roads in Pax Vale, dried shrub­bery, dusty road­sides and cracked soil were vis­i­ble — con­di­tions some res­i­dents said re­flect­ed the sever­i­ty of the wa­ter short­age in the area. Short­ly af­ter Guardian Me­dia ar­rived in the neigh­bour­hood, a WASA truck was seen de­liv­er­ing wa­ter to a home.

One work­er, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Jankie, said ef­forts to keep com­mu­ni­ties sup­plied with wa­ter were de­mand­ing, but not­ed that truck-borne de­liv­er­ies pro­vid­ed tem­po­rary re­lief for af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

“That’s part of our job, we have to come out and do it. We’re re­al­ly busy, you see how it is.

“The res­i­dents are thank­ful for it be­cause there’s no wa­ter on the line right now,” he said.

How­ev­er, one Sam Bou­caud res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said that while truck-borne de­liv­er­ies were ap­pre­ci­at­ed, res­i­dents were al­so fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing the ser­vice.

“Now is the worst time ever. I’ve been liv­ing here for over 40 years and it’s the worst it has ever been.

“They talk about call­ing in to get truck-borne wa­ter, and if we see one truck for the week, we see plen­ty. We’re not even see­ing the trucks com­ing around to dis­trib­ute wa­ter and that’s an­oth­er is­sue,” the res­i­dent said.

The res­i­dent al­so urged WASA to con­sid­er the hard­ship res­i­dents face be­cause of the pro­longed short­ages.

“Think about how the next per­son will feel with­out wa­ter. Think about the per­son who has to go to work and life will be a lot eas­i­er,” he said.

While speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, the res­i­dent at­tempt­ed to turn on an out­door pipe to demon­strate the lack of wa­ter sup­ply, point­ing to dust that had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed around the noz­zle.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day evening, WASA con­firmed that the dis­rup­tions in wa­ter sup­ply was due to a se­ries of me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal fail­ures which af­fect­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion as­sets in San­ta Cruz and Val­sayn.

The au­thor­i­ty not­ed that the is­sues be­gan be­tween May 1 and May 4, when a 12-inch trans­mis­sion main was rup­tured due to works by NH con­trac­tors near the San­ta Cruz Boost­er Sta­tion.

WASA said ef­forts were un­der­way to re­pair the San­ta Cruz Boost­er Sta­tion which was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed yes­ter­day, with the sched­uled wa­ter sup­ply in Up­per San­ta Cruz to re­sume with­in 24 to 48 hours.