Water back for almost all in Tijuana and Rosarito, after days of outage

Drinking h2o has been steadily returning to Tijuana and Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, arsenic of past Sunday, aft respective days of a large outage.

The shortage affected astir 691 neighborhoods successful Tijuana and Playas de Rosarito owed to interconnection and rehabilitation enactment connected the Florido-Aguaje Aqueduct, a cardinal infrastructure constituent that supplies h2o to much than 1.3 cardinal residents successful the region.

The enactment that chopped disconnected h2o successful 691 neighborhoods was for interconnection and rehabilitation of the Florido-Aguaje Aqueduct, a cardinal infrastructure constituent that supplies h2o to much than 1.3 cardinal residents successful the Tijuana-Rosarito portion of Baja California. (Comisión Estatal de Servicios Públicos de Tijuana/Facebook)

“Since Sunday, we’ve been re-establishing work to each the neighborhoods affected,” said Jesús García Castro, caput of the Tijuana State Public Services Commission (Cespt). “Everyone should beryllium backmost online by aboriginal this week.” 

Water proviso was gradually restored starting astatine 6 p.m. connected Sunday, with authorities informing that it would instrumentality up to 36 hours for afloat restoration. That aforesaid day, Cespt reported that h2o work had been restored to implicit 300 neighborhoods successful Tijuana. 

On Tuesday, Cespt reported that 5% of the affected areas were inactive constricted to intermittent h2o flow, marking a week since the outage. 

The president of the Downtown Merchants Association, Guillermo Díaz Orozco, told the paper El Sol de Tijuana that hotels and restaurants without retention tanks person been the astir affected, with estimated economical losses of up to 15%.

Households person besides been affected, arsenic wealth that was destined for nutrient and different goods had to beryllium diverted to buying water.

“Our regular is disrupted,” Ana García, a nonmigratory successful 1 of the affected neighborhoods, told El Sol de Tijuana. “We debar cooking to forestall creating a mess, and this besides impacts our finances, since we person to devour out. We can’t support due hygiene.”

According to authorities, enactment connected the Florido-Aguaje Aqueduct took immoderate 86 hours. The tasks included replacing tube sections, repairing leaks and upgrading infrastructure to amended strategy ratio and trim aboriginal failures.

García said that the renovation enactment was unexpectedly delayed by the request to unearth an aged tempest drain utilized much than 70 years agone arsenic irrigation for erstwhile cultivation areas. Another crushed was that houses successful the country are located astir connected apical of the aqueduct.

That renovation enactment was scheduled to beryllium completed connected Saturday morning, but was extended until Sunday evening. 

Authorities person asked affected residents to proceed reporting h2o shortages. “We privation to convey everyone for their patience and we privation to apologize for the delays,” García said. 

With reports from El Sol de Tijuana, San Diego Red, El Imparcial, Border Report and Milenio