St James residents demand answers over days of dirty water

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Res­i­dents of St James say they have been forced to cope with brown and, in some cas­es, al­most black wa­ter flow­ing from their taps since the week­end, dis­rupt­ing dai­ly life and rais­ing con­cerns about con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

The dis­coloured wa­ter has af­fect­ed house­holds’ abil­i­ty to cook, wash, brush their teeth and car­ry out oth­er rou­tine ac­tiv­i­ties. Res­i­dents al­so say the prob­lem has led to the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of wa­ter tanks, house­hold fil­tra­tion sys­tems and swim­ming pools, cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al clean­ing and main­te­nance costs.

St James res­i­dent San­dra Ma­haraj yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia she first no­ticed the is­sue on Sun­day morn­ing while prepar­ing food.

“Since Sun­day when I got up and went to cook, I re­alised the wa­ter was so brown and I had to get bot­tled wa­ter,” Ma­haraj said.

Be­liev­ing the prob­lem would be tem­po­rary, she left the tap run­ning in an at­tempt to clear the line, but with­out suc­cess.

“I tried run­ning the wa­ter con­stant­ly for a while and it just didn’t clear. By Mon­day, it got worse,” she said.

By Tues­day morn­ing, Ma­haraj said the sit­u­a­tion had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed fur­ther.

“When I filled a buck­et just to see what was hap­pen­ing, the wa­ter was black. I mean, lit­er­al­ly black,” she said.

Con­cerned, she con­tact­ed neigh­bours and dis­cov­ered they were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems.

Oth­er res­i­dents al­so re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing brown wa­ter through their taps.

Ma­haraj said she re­fus­es to use the wa­ter for cook­ing.

“It’s dif­fi­cult be­cause you have to cook. I can’t cook in that wa­ter. Even if you try to boil it, it’s still look­ing brown, so who would want to drink wa­ter look­ing like that?” she asked.

She said even brush­ing her teeth had be­come a chal­lenge.

“When I tried to wash my mouth, you could ac­tu­al­ly taste the dirt in the wa­ter and I had to get bot­tled wa­ter to brush my teeth,” she said.

Laun­dry has al­so been af­fect­ed.

“You can’t wash in that wa­ter. When you fill up the wash­ing ma­chine, the wa­ter is so brown. Even to wash dark clothes, you wouldn’t want to use that kind of wa­ter be­cause there’s a smell com­ing from it as well,” Ma­haraj said.

For many fam­i­lies, the prob­lem has meant pur­chas­ing bot­tled wa­ter for ba­sic dai­ly needs.

Res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that the dis­coloured wa­ter had al­so en­tered house­hold stor­age tanks, forc­ing some home­own­ers to con­sid­er drain­ing and clean­ing them.

Hi­la Saline, a Mor­vant res­i­dent who was in St James at the time, said she was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sim­i­lar prob­lem in Par­adise Heights, Mor­vant.

She al­so com­plained that re­peat­ed at­tempts to con­tact the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had gone unan­swered.

Wa­ter fil­tra­tion sys­tems have been af­fect­ed as well, with res­i­dents re­port­ing stained fil­ters and ex­press­ing con­cern that car­tridges may need re­plac­ing.

Res­i­dents with swim­ming pools said dirty wa­ter en­ter­ing their sys­tems had af­fect­ed wa­ter clar­i­ty and could re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant treat­ment costs once the sup­ply re­turns to nor­mal.

Up­per Bournes Road res­i­dent John Cook de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as the worst he had ever ex­pe­ri­enced.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s the worst, worst, worst I’ve ever seen,” Cook said.

He said he was for­tu­nate to have stored wa­ter in a tank.

“Thank God I have a tank. If I didn’t have that tank, I don’t know what I would be do­ing, broth­er,” he said.

How­ev­er, Cook not­ed that even res­i­dents with stor­age sys­tems could face prob­lems if dis­coloured wa­ter en­tered their tanks.

His con­cern, he said, was not com­pen­sa­tion.

“Give the peo­ple clean wa­ter,” Cook said.

“We are a peace­ful neigh­bour­hood. I just wish they would do the right thing. Give peo­ple clean wa­ter. That’s all we want.”

An­oth­er St James res­i­dent ex­pressed sim­i­lar frus­tra­tion, say­ing she could not com­fort­ably pre­pare meals while the sup­ply re­mained dirty.

Res­i­dents said they are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that af­ter sev­er­al days, the wa­ter has still not re­turned to nor­mal.

Res­i­dents are now call­ing on WASA to ex­plain the cause of the pro­longed dis­coloura­tion, in­di­cate how long it is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue and say whether any flush­ing or re­me­di­al work is be­ing car­ried out in the af­fect­ed ar­eas.

For Cook, how­ev­er, the re­quest is straight­for­ward.

“We don’t want com­pen­sa­tion and all that. Clean wa­ter. That’s all we want,” he said.

Sev­en Seas de­sal plant of­fline for emer­gency re­pairs

The Sev­en Seas De­sali­na­tion Plant will re­main out of ser­vice for a fur­ther 24 hours as the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) car­ries out emer­gency re­pairs to a 24-inch main.

WASA said yes­ter­day that the plant was tak­en of­fline at 7 am yes­ter­day and is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to ser­vice on or be­fore 7 am to­day.

The main car­ries wa­ter from the de­sali­na­tion plant in­to WASA’s dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

Cus­tomers in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in the Cen­tral and South West dis­tricts may ex­pe­ri­ence dis­rup­tions in their wa­ter sup­ply dur­ing the re­pairs, WASA said.

The af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties are Vance Riv­er, Guapo, Gon­za­les, Egypt Vil­lage, New Lands, Ves­signy, Par­ry­lands, Cochrane, Ma­haica, Fan­ny Vil­lage, Har­ri­man Park, Clifton Hill and Cap-de-Ville.

WASA said truck-borne wa­ter is avail­able to af­fect­ed ar­eas on re­quest.

It said cus­tomers can con­tact the au­thor­i­ty’s hot­line at 800-4H2O. WASA apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience and thanked cus­tomers for their pa­tience while crews com­plete the re­pairs.