Water shortage hits Gualo Rai

Residents of the Gualo Rai area have been experiencing a severe drop in water supply for several days now due to broken water wells. Since last week, residents have been getting just about two hours of water service daily. On Monday, they actually had to do without.

Bruce Megarr, deputy director of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s water and wastewater division, disclosed yesterday that the problem is due to eight of its wells being down—two in Gualo Rai, two in Puerto Rico, and four in other areas.

“It’s cutting production off by 14 percent,” he said.

Gualo Rai resident Violy Ablog said she understands CUC’s situation but she cannot ignore the fact that her family is affected by the inadequate supply of water since last week. She cited an instance where she needed to buy 500 gallons of water for $50 just to sustain their daily water needs.

Ablog has a bedridden father and a number of tenants in the area.

She said CUC usually opens water service in the morning for about two hours.

“We can’t even fill all our containers,” she told Saipan Tribune, adding that she just hope that CUC would do its best to fix the problem soon.

Another resident in the area, Celing Orallo, said the situation also affects her household.

Megarr said the water problem in Gualo Rai started on Feb. 18 and CUC is just awaiting the arrival of new high quality pumps this week to fix the problem.

“We’re expecting to address this concern in a week to 10 days,” he told Saipan Tribune. “But still we’re hoping we can address it sooner than expected.”

Megarr explained that Gualo Rai is the far end of the distribution system for Puerto Rico and needs all residents’ water tanks to be filled first before it could actually serve the whole Gualo Rai area.

Megarr said CUC intends to use better quality casings on pumps in the area to make sure they will last longer.

These new equipment are more expensive, though, and the delivery of the materials take longer than normal, so the water division is using some old-style pumps to temporarily fix the problems, Megarr said.

“Our game plan is to see all these [replacements] done. In the meantime, we use old style pumps because it takes months before we get the high-quality stainless [casings]. So, do I leave our customers without water for months? No. That’s why we’re putting in some lower quality pumps and dealing with the cost,” Megarr said.

The official said CUC is deeply concerned about its customers’ plight. “We have an obligation and I sincerely apologize for these service interruptions,” he said, adding that “not having water in our pipes” is also a public health issue.

Megarr said the CUC water division needs more supplies to take care of leaks in its distribution system and more storage tanks to effectively carry out its functions.

He disclosed that some eight months ago, CUC replaced the pumps in the Gualo Rai area, leading to the discovery of other existing problems such as transformer arrangements, which produce excess heat and wasted energy.