St. Thomas suffered an unplanned water outage Thursday, when a broken feed pump to its waste heat recovery boiler caused a serious service interruption that closed at least four schools and four government agencies, according to the V.I. Water and Power Authority.
Technical personnel have been working on the problem all day and are making headway on the repairs at the Randolph Harley Power Plant, but shortages will continue because WAPA will not be able to meet its evening pumping schedule of 7 to 9 p.m., according to a statement from the V.I. Water and Power Authority released Thursday afternoon.
The utility was unable to pump water on its standing schedule of 5 to 7 this morning or gravity feed water throughout the day. WAPA is trying, however, to get three of the new temporary reverse osmosis plants online, in addition to boiler unit no. 11 and at least one of the desalination plants into service. If possible, water will be pumped for one hour tonight from 10 to 11, according to WAPA.
WAPA will pump water from 5 to 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, and tomorrow evening from 7 to 9. As storage is built over the next several days, the schedule will be relaxed as possible.
The departments of Property and Procurement, Licensing and Consumer Affairs, Housing Parks and Recreation, and the V.I. Taxicab Commission closed Thursday morning due to the unexpected water interruption, as did Gladys Abraham Elementary, Ulla F. Muller Elementary, Jane E. Tuitt Elementary, and Addelita Cancryn Junior High.
St. Thomas has been facing periodic water outages since mid-November, due to mechanical difficulties slowing down water production within its Randolph Harley Plant.
