What are we paying for?

THE EDITOR: The Battery development less than a mile from the centre of St James has been without water for at least six months. For four of those months, WASA provided an intermittent truck borne supply to the more than 70 households in the area. This incredibly inefficient process continued despite properties higher up Fort George Road and in other locations getting pipe borne water.

Since the beginning of September, the contractors, who trucked the water, stopped and complained that WASA had not paid them. This has meant they have stopped delivering. Now the only access to water is to pay for private trucks to deliver.

The seventy or so properties are all paying their water rates and get no water for their money (there is no sewer either), worse, they are having to pay again, this time to private contractors to bring the water they so desperately need. People cannot live without water.

WASA claims they do not have to supply water to “private hillside developments”. In the early 1970s, this is what the Battery was. It is not any longer. It is a mixed community of 70 odd households that happens to be on a hillside, not very high up. We need WASA to recognise that their nearly 50 year old classifications are out of date and to provide the water that we in the Battery area are paying for.

TM Lewis, St James