Saipan customers of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. are now back to 100-percent, 24-hour water supply islandwide, according to CUC deputy director William Gilmore. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very happy with the way things are. We know there are a few isolated areas that are still affected and those are being worked on. But it\u2019s very few,\u201d said Gilmore Friday.<\/p>\n
He said they still encounter a few incidents when some areas lose water, but he said CUC usually responds \u201cvery quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Super Typhoon Yutu hit Saipan and Tinian last Oct. 24 and 25, CUC was already providing the island 100-percent, 24-hour water supply, he said.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Yutu, he said, the water supply dropped because they lost power and relied on generator power.<\/p>\n
Gilmore said they gradually went back online and 95 percent of their customers basically got their water supply by Dec. 25 and 26, 2018.<\/p>\n
However, the water supply at the time was spotty, he said, because they were having problems with main breaks and other issues.<\/p>\n
Last Jan. 13, they became more confident because the water wells were back on island power and not relying on the generators of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast Jan. 13, we\u2019re back to what we declare 24-hour water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gilmore also disclosed that their non-revenue water\u2014unaccounted and wasted water\u2014went down from the 73-77 percent in November, to 63 percent now. <\/p>\n
Gilmore said they expect to get back to the pre-Yutu level\u2014which was about 50 percent\u2014 by \u201cstaying consistent and diligently maintaining the assets that we got out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gilmore said they have another project that they are going to start that will help them improve the non-revenue numbers, which would basically involve removing water leaks. <\/p>\n
He said that since they are back with 100-percent, 24-hour water supply, they want to be consistent.<\/p>\n
Gilmore said they changed the hydraulic system so that they can better supply water. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been monitoring [water] pressures at the various tank areas. And we have been identifying where we have to adjust the systems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan customers of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. are now back to 100-percent, 24-hour water supply…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293579","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}