Many res­i­dents in San Fer­nan­do and sur­round­ing ar­eas are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a fourth con­sec­u­tive day with­out wa­ter fol­low­ing an abrupt sup­ply dis­rup­tion.

How­ev­er, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has stat­ed that the sup­ply has been re­stored and should ful­ly nor­malise by Tues­day. The dis­rup­tion be­gan on Fri­day, leav­ing thou­sands with­out wa­ter as WASA car­ried out ur­gent re­pairs on a leak­ing 28-inch trans­mis­sion pipeline along the San Fer­nan­do By­pass near Rush­worth Street. This leak af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of both the San Fer­nan­do and South Oropouche boost­er sta­tions.

While WASA ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to re­store the sup­ply by Sat­ur­day, un­fore­seen chal­lenges caused fur­ther de­lays. Al­though WASA re­port­ed that re­pairs were com­plet­ed and the sup­ply was re­stored at 7.30 pm on Sun­day, many com­mu­ni­ties re­mained with­out a pipe-borne sup­ply as late as 5 pm on Mon­day. Res­i­dents at­tempt­ing to ac­cess a truck-borne sup­ply via WASA’s hot­line en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties, with some be­ing told they would need to wait three to five work­ing days for the ser­vice.

Re­spond­ing to a query from Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day af­ter­noon, WASA ex­plained that full nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the sup­ply is ex­pect­ed to take ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 to 48 hours, par­tic­u­lar­ly in more el­e­vat­ed ar­eas of the net­work.  WASA said most ar­eas have re­turned to nor­mal sup­ply, with full restora­tion to el­e­vat­ed points ex­pect­ed by Tues­day night. 

In pro­vid­ing an up­date it said, Gulf View – low­er-ly­ing ar­eas have re­ceived wa­ter, while cus­tomers on the out­skirts and at high­er el­e­va­tions are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive sup­ply by Mon­day night. La Ro­main – low-ly­ing ar­eas are al­ready re­ceiv­ing wa­ter, while high points are ex­pect­ed to be sup­plied by Mon­day night. South Oropouche & Rousil­lac – A sep­a­rate dis­rup­tion caused by a leak­ing 8-inch main has been re­solved, and sup­ply should now be re­stored. Debe – sys­tem pres­sures are grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing, with cus­tomers on the out­er edges of the pipeline net­work ex­pect­ed to re­ceive wa­ter by Wednes­day. WASA has as­sured res­i­dents that ef­forts are on­go­ing to ful­ly sta­bilise the wa­ter sup­ply across all af­fect­ed ar­eas.