Piped water to start flowing soon – Vanterpool

Works Minister, Mark Vanterpool, has said that residents could start seeing water flowing through their pipes as early as the end of this week, noting that assessment is being carried out on some pipelines.

“What we are doing right now, we don’t want to release the water so quickly, because we don’t know what is the state of affairs with the big pipes coming along the roads and so on. We are investigating those.”

“But as soon as we can, we will start releasing water on a daily basis for two or three hours each day to get people to fill up their tanks and so on; that should be by the end of this week,” the minister told BVI News Online.

He added that plans are in place to acquire generators to power up water pumps so that within the next two weeks the territory’s water supply can return to normal.

“As you know, the reservoirs are full of water; we full them before the storm happened… We [are] bringing in some extra generators to power up the pumps, so in the next week or two we should have water running on a regular basis.”

He noted that, in the meantime, the government is ensuring that everyone in the territory have access to the precious commodity.

“What we are doing is providing water to the essential places; the hospital got 50, 000 gallons yesterday [Monday]. We are sending some water to Jost van Dyke [today].”

“We are sending water to some other areas that are essential to make sure that the shelters and so on are operating. And then starting [today] we want to send around water trucks and fire trucks around the various Districts. So you can bring your buckets and your pots and your bottles,” Vanterpool urged.