SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Tijuana residents are being warned about what’s being described as a “mega cut” in water service at the end of this month.
The city’s water department, known as the State Public Service Commission in Tijuana (CESPT), says about 625 colonias, about half the city of Tijuana, will be without service for anywhere from 30 to 36 hours not counting another 30 hours to “air out” the lines and restore sufficient water flow.
The beach community of Rosarito will not be affected, said Víctor Daniel Amador Barragán, CESPT director.
“Our intention is that everything will turn out fine just like all the other jobs we’ve done up to this point,” he said. “This will happen at the end of this month before we reach the summer months of July, August and September when the hot weather complicates things.”
According to CESPT, one of the major aqueducts in the city needs to be repaired.
“It has a leak and it’s losing 1.5 liters of water per second,” said Amador. “It’s complicated and requires major work using difficult techniques, we’re already looking at the process — in a few weeks we’ll define a work schedule and a timeline for citizens to be aware of.”
He said their goal is to minimize the impact on residents.
“We’re already doing a lot of the preliminary work so when the day comes we just work on installing the pipes and not have to do anything else, we’ll give everyone at least a week’s notice.”
Tijuana residents have gone through this before. There have been other major water outages including one in January and another during April and May when many residents and migrant shelters complained they were without water for weeks at a time.