Newly released data prove what CUC customers already know: Water service on Saipan is getting worse, not better. <\/p>\n
U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld sent me the data, collected by the CNMI Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, showing that only 73 percent of families are getting 24-hour water, down from a high of 94 percent. <\/p>\n
This is not the result of Typhoon Soudelor. BECQ reports the drop in water service started back in 2013. <\/p>\n
And it is not because there is a lack of federal funding, as some public officials are saying. In fact, we are getting seven times more federal water funding every year than when I came into office. <\/p>\n
Achieving 24-hour water for Saipan is one of my top priorities. Only 60 percent of Saipan households had round-the-clock water in 2008. So I got federal funding increased from about $1 million to over $7 million per year. And 24-hour water service jumped to 94 percent within five years. <\/p>\n
Counting the money we appropriated in Congress this December, the CNMI will have received $58 million for water improvements during my eight years in office. If ratepayers had to come up with that money, the bill would have been, on average, an additional $500 every year for every CUC customer. The federal funds I got in Congress saved us from paying another CUC surcharge. <\/p>\n
As soon as I got the new data from Mr. Blumenfeld, I wrote to Governor Torres to learn what the issues are and what more I could do. And I met with the Governor, too. <\/p>\n
It is not an easy problem to solve. The system is old and crumbling. One thing gets fixed, another falls apart. <\/p>\n
But money is not the problem. And I will keep working to bring in those millions of extra dollars to keep rates down and to help the Governor get us back to where we were a few years ago: round-the-clock water for 94 percent of Saipan families\u2014and eventually to 24-hour water for all. (Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Newly released data prove what CUC customers already know: Water service on Saipan is getting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[880,49,8949,6333],"class_list":["post-226008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-becq","tag-cuc","tag-governor-torres","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}