Thousands of Belize City residents living along the Philip Goldson Highway, had the major inconvenience of no running water for almost 24 hours.
Belize Water Services Limited says that it was due to a break in their main water lines, which happened during their infrastructure works yesterday.
Currently, BWS is spending 4.5 million-dollars to upgrade their supply system under the Philip Goldson Highway. That project is running at the same time as road works by Cisco Construction.
And yesterday, BWS encountered a series of challenges which lined up perfectly for their delivery system to fail for an entire day.
That caused Belize City residents living on Princess Margaret Drive, Coral Grove, West Landivar, Buttonwood Bay, Belama phases 1 to 4, and Bella Vista to go without water anywhere form 12 to 24 hours. This morning, the outage was extended all the way up to Phillip Goldson Highway, where communities such Ladyville, Lords Bank, Los Lagos, the Mile 13 community, Burrell Boom, Sandhill, Biscayne and Gardenia all had their water supply cut off for several hours.
It's a nightmare for BWS, and this morning, and the company's senior management hosted an emergency press conference to explain what happened:
Alvan Haynes - CEO, BWSL
"Our plant as at Sand Hill what we call double run and 24 inch main brings water down directly to Belize City and feeds the 2 major tanks here at Southside pumping station and at Wilson Street; Belize City is then fed from those. Works that we have conceived basically involves primarily changing out the old 14 inch that runs there and the story of that is that 14 inch originally used to feed Belize City and back in the 90s as the system was improved, 24 inch was run as the new main and the 14 in then became the distribution main that feeds everything from the plant down to Belize City and in fact it goes the other way as well, now up to Biscayne. Generally any interruption on that 14 inch will result in outage along the Phillip Goldson Highway, all areas supplied off it on the Phillip Goldson Highway. As we've been working on this project for the major change out we have identified that we needed to do 6 major tie ins; basically connecting to the new lines and disconnecting from the old lines in order to feed Buttonwood Bay, the Belama Phases, Driftwood Bay and etc."
"We've completed 4 of those 6 now, the one last night was actually the 5th and that was right there as you pass Chetumal Street Boulevard into Belama. Unfortunately as we executed those works, we had several problems that ended up causing outage and low pressure into Belama Phases 3 and 4 for extended period and that's simply because the connection at TV Ramos junction and the highway, Benny's Apartments as people often refer to that junction ended up being broken because of the location and the fact that it was already dark and the work was still ongoing for the new line at the Chetumal Street junction, it was decided to defer repairing of that break until today, daylight. Unfortunately it also happened that we had another break on the 14 inch main up at Ladyville directly across from Lowes Supermarket which then resulted in lower than normal pressure coming down on the 14 inch and because Belama phases 3 and 4 were being fed by lines that were going into Belama from phases 1 and 2, the lines were too small to provide full pressure back into Belama Phases 3 and 4 which resulted in the outages and low pressure felt in that area. I therefore apologize sincerely to those residences because it was due to a said of unforeseen circumstances."
BWS says that as soon as this project is completed, there should be no more interruptions. Also at today's press conference, the company's operations manager said that he hopes that the customers being negatively affected will bear patience while the infrastructure works are being completed. He said that once everything has been upgraded, your water services should be better. He explained why:
Dave Pascasio - Operations Manager, BWSL
"In any major works like this there will be inconvenience to our customers and I have to repeat what the CEO said that we cannot stop apologizing and ask for understanding from our customers. This project has been ongoing for over a year and we have interruption notices to customers that goes out daily but when the works is completed everybody, that 2800 customers should see increased pressures and flow. We've heard of the increase pressures and flows from some people already that says that they could discontinue the use of a pump. So that much we guaranteed them that they will see increased pressure and flow upon project completion that should happen shortly."
Residents from Belama tell us that their water was turned back on at around at around 11:30 this morning.
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