Padarath: 20 of 21 major leaks at Plipdeco repaired by WASA

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says 20 out of 21 leaks on the Point Lisas De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co) Es­tate have been re­paired, and by this week, all will be com­plet­ed and Padarath has blamed for­mer min­is­ter of util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les for fail­ing to ad­dress the is­sue, which was re­spon­si­ble for a $250 mil­lion loss an­nu­al­ly for the state util­i­ty.

Padarath gave the in­for­ma­tion in a state­ment to the Low­er House on Fri­day.

Padarath said he had man­dat­ed the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to ag­gres­sive­ly ex­pand leak de­tec­tion and re­pair ac­tiv­i­ties na­tion­wide, be­yond rou­tine op­er­a­tions, to re­cov­er treat­ed wa­ter that has been lost for six years due to ne­glect and in­ac­tion.

He said over the past six to eight weeks, WASA has part­nered close­ly with Plipde­co to iden­ti­fy and ad­dress sev­er­al long-stand­ing leaks with­in the es­tate.

“It is deeply con­cern­ing that many of these leaks were re­port­ed to WASA as far back as 2020 and left un­at­tend­ed by the for­mer WASA ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment, de­spite the grow­ing strain on na­tion­al wa­ter sup­plies and the hard­ship faced by thou­sands of res­i­den­tial cus­tomers ...This was not an emer­gency that sud­den­ly ap­peared. This was a cri­sis man­u­fac­tured by ne­glect, sus­tained by in­dif­fer­ence and al­lowed to fes­ter by the for­mer min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, who per­fect­ed the art of be­ing present in of­fice but ab­sent in lead­er­ship,” he said.

Padarath said is­sue of the leaks was raised six years ago, via cor­re­spon­dence from Plipde­co.

“Re­ports were sub­mit­ted. Red flags were waved. Yet the re­sponse from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion was si­lence—en­abled by a top-heavy, po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed WASA board that failed to gov­ern, failed to in­ter­vene...” he said, ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment of ne­glect­ing Plipde­co.

He said ini­tial as­sess­ments iden­ti­fied nine pri­or­i­ty leaks.

“Prop­er tech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions—de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion—un­cov­ered 21 ac­tive trans­mis­sion fail­ures con­cealed be­neath con­gest­ed util­i­ty cor­ri­dors and in open lots.”

De­spite op­er­at­ing amid high-pres­sure gas pipelines, hy­dro­gen and CO2 lines, high-volt­age elec­tri­cal in­fra­struc­ture and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works, he said Gov­ern­ment co­or­di­nat­ed a dis­ci­plined, risk-based in­ter­ven­tion with Plipde­co, NGC, T&TEC, and TSTT.

Re­pairs com­menced on De­cem­ber 8, 2025, he added, de­tail­ing the out­come.

Padarath said when Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice, the trans­mis­sion sys­tem was found haem­or­rhag­ing an es­ti­mat­ed six mil­lion im­pe­r­i­al gal­lons of potable wa­ter dai­ly, with loss­es val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $250 mil­lion for a six-year pe­ri­od.

“A loss of that mag­ni­tude does not oc­cur with­out sys­temic fail­ure at the min­is­te­r­i­al and board lev­el, he said.”