Thousands of residents and commuters in the Cunupia area breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday as the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) completed a major project at Bridal Road.
The completion of the project meant a return of their pipe-borne supply after several weeks, as well as the repaving of a major transit route in their area.
During a tour of the completed works on Monday evening, Minister of Public Utilities Barry Padarath said WASA was able to complete the repair of a leak off the 54-inch main at Bridal Road, where thousands of residents were affected.
The million-dollar project included extensive roadway repaving works.
“This has been a major infrastructural project that resulted in inconvenience to residents across several constituencies. The acting CEO of WASA indicated that there was over 20,000 residents being affected by this major infrastructural work. What started off as a leak ended up costing taxpayers roughly about over a million dollars.”
During the repair work, the Minister noted that crews found dilapidated WASA infrastructure.
“We met tremendous difficulty in terms of what the challenges were. It was not a simple fix. On many occasions we had to go back and do work that we thought was actually completed. In some instances they dug at least 45 feet to have the problem rectified, and therefore on several occasions we continued to meet with several challenges in terms of infrastructural challenges.”
Minister Padarath revealed the Government’s plans to address the ageing infrastructure at the Water and Sewerage Authority.
“Today we spoke about what’s happening with respect to Maraval. The CEO has given me the commitment that that too is a project that we are actively looking at. As we go into budget, we will be speaking about major infrastructural development works and the change out of pipelines and mains across the country. Today we had a meeting about that as well as some of the water treatment facilities.”
The Bridal Road project required major excavation, dewatering and shoring works as soil conditions became unstable.