People living in the Lami-Nausori corridor should expect water disruptions to continue into 2022, says Water Authority of Fiji chief operations officer Seru Soderberg.
Mr Soderberg explained that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the highly anticipated Viria Water Project which was expected to solve the issue would be completed by the end of 2022 contributing an additional 26 megalitres to the current water system.
“This is why we continue to appeal to people to harvest rainwater when they have rain and not to wait on our public advisories,” he said.
“What we are doing now is within the capacity of the current infrastructure.”
Mr Soderberg said that two of their five water pumps were not pumping efficiently which led to a major water disruption in the past two weeks in the Suva-Nausori corridor.
He said on December 4 they had thought that it was a major burst main, however, after tracking the issue they noted that there were no bursts, but identified the faulty pumps.
While carrying out measurements, Mr Soderberg said they noted that the inflow was a lot less than the normal amount of around 107 million litres a day, and at that time they found out that they were producing 100 million and missing out on 7 million litres of water.
He said they had addressed one of the pump’s issues on December 5 while rectifying an electrical fault on the second pump a day later.
Responding to queries from the media, Mr Soderberg said it would cost $2 billion to $3 billion to refurbish the ageing infrastructure along the Suva-Nausori corridor.
“It’s not a cheap exercise and that is part of our 20 years master plan.
“We have a master plan which started in 2013 and ends in 2033 and the biggest component of this plan is the Viria component.”
