An endless wait that will finally end. The water supply must be restored this Thursday in three towns of Guadeloupe, deprived of water for more than a week due to malicious acts which damaged the main pipeline of the archipelago, announced Wednesday the prefect of the region.
The “cutting and replacement work on the damaged section was completed” during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, said the prefect in a press release, who plans a return of water on Thursday “to Goyave in the morning and to Abymes and Gosier in the evening, subject to maintaining a nominal pressure in the network and the effectiveness of the repair.
Water temporarily distributed
“Ninety-nine pallets of water were distributed [Wednesday] in Abymes, 38 in Gosier, 50 in Goyave and 6 in Pointe-à-Pitre,” the press release specifies.
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Les Abymes and Le Gosier are among the most populated towns in the archipelago, bringing together more than 80,000 inhabitants in total. Since March 19, several municipalities in Guadeloupe have suffered total or partial water cuts, the result of a rupture in the main pipeline linking Basse-Terre to Grande-Terre due to “malicious actions”, had previously indicated the prefecture.
Regular water cuts
Judicial investigations were opened for “aggravated destruction and endangering the lives of others,” prosecutors from Pointe-à-Pitre and Basse-Terre said in a joint press release on Saturday, without specifying the nature of the damage.
Guadeloupe is experiencing, due to decades of harmful management and dilapidated networks, water cuts organized by the operator to supply the municipalities of the archipelago in turn. Since the end of 2021, a single management has tried to resolve the problems, but is experiencing numerous political and financial dysfunctions.