Water supply to be restored

By DALE LUMA
WATER supply in Port Moresby is expected to be restored today but some suburbs will still experience low pressure in their supply due to a buildup of air pressure in the water pipes, according to Water PNG.
Acting managing director Parkop Kurua said those experiencing low pressure or no water supply needed to contact the Water PNG call centre for assistance.
The water disruption over the last few days was a result of damage to a crank shaft of a water clarifier at the Erima water plant due to planned maintenance over the weekend.
“What happened over the last two days resulted firstly from a planned maintenance work,” Kurua said.
“On Saturday, certain parts of the city were without water because we had planned to do a partial shutdown of the water supply.
“Our team had worked on fixing the gear box bearing for one of the clarifiers.
“We have three up at Mt Eriama, the one that we did the maintenance on is the biggest of the three that supplies about two-thirds of the city.
“That work was done successfully, but in the process of restoring water, we had an incident of a broken crank shaft, so as a result, we prolonged the restoration of supply.”
Kurua said a contractor had been brought in to fix the damaged crank shaft and had completed the job, but the system would need four to five more hours to fill up the tank and following that adequate pressure would build up to supply the city.
“We are anticipating restoration to the city maybe in the next six to seven hours, meaning by 10 pm to 11pm tonight (last night), full restoration should be achieved,” Kurua said.
He said water operation was challenging and after Water PNG restored water to the city, certain parts of the city would still have problems because of air pockets that had developed in the system.
“When that happens, we have call centres that can take up calls from customers,” Kurua said.
“If people are experiencing low pressure or no water, they should contact our call centre and our team will come in and release the air pressure that are in those systems.”