CUC: Four areas on Saipan face water outage

The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. announced yesterday that residents of Dandan, Airport Road, Fina Sisu, and As Lito will experience seven hours of no water supply on Wednesday, Dec. 28, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

The water outage, according to CUC, is to allow its crewmembers and AIC Marianas to continue replacing existing valves and piping connections on the water lines in the affected areas.

The outage will affect residents living on Lower Dandan, Airport Road, Fina Sisu, and As Lito, while residents of Upper Dandan will be experiencing low water pressure.

Due to the scale of the work to be performed, CUC recommends that travelers take alternate routes or to exercise caution when driving through the affected areas. The utilities corporation apologizes for any inconvenience resulting from these projects and the water service interruption.

Meantime, funding for CNMI water and sewer projects are expected to increase as a result of the efforts of Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan.

In his newsletter last week, Sablan announced that he asked that 1.5 percent of the Clean Water Fund be set aside for water and sewer funds for the CNMI and other insular areas to the House of Appropriations Subcommittee, which is responsible for Environmental Protection Agency funding.

Sablan said that the House and Senate appropriators included this request in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of FY 2012. According to Sablan, the current law sets aside just .25 percent of the Clean Water Fund for the islands and .33 percent of the Safe Drinking Water Fund. With the new request, insular areas will see a 1.5 percent set aside for each Fund.

“For fiscal years 2010 and 2011, I was also successful in increasing the percentage set aside of 1.24 percent for the Clean Water Fund and 1.5 percent for the Safe Drinking Water Fund which resulted in nearly five times more funding for each program. In the final package, Congress appropriated $1.47 billion for the Clean Water Fund and $919 million for the Safe Drinking Water Fund, a decrease from the fiscal 2011 enacted amounts of $1.52 billion and $963 million respectively,” said Sablan, adding that while there is a decrease in the Clean Water Fund, the 1.5 percent set aside ensures that the NMI is not harmed by the cuts.

“Even with the reduction in appropriations, the formula change softens the impact of the cuts and allows the CNMI government to meet our community’s infrastructure needs,” added Sablan.