Problem at Contentment Pump Station Caused St. Croix Water Interruption Over the Weekend

Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority customers were without water from early Sunday morning when a failure in St. Croix’s Contentment Pump Station caused the distribution system from Estate Contentment to Frederiksted town to depressurize. The depressurization occurred because water is being pumped directly to water customers from the Estate Richmond tank through the Contentment Pump Station due to the low storage levels in the Kingshill and Mountain water tanks.

As reported previously, WAPA was forced to implement a water conservation schedule approximately three weeks ago because St. Croix’s water storage was at dangerously low levels of only 5 - 10% of capacity due to operational problems with the desalination units in the Richmond power plant and minimal rainfall. Over the last several weeks since the repair of the units, WAPA has been able to increase storage by 20% but continues a water service interruption schedule from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily.

Sunday’s early morning unscheduled water interruption due to the pump station failure was corrected by 8:30 a.m., however, another system failure mostly affecting the west end of the island occurred as a result of the depressurization. It was not until 8:30 p.m. Sunday that water operations and maintenance crews were able to determine that a main line valve west of Estate Williams Delight had collapsed internally, blocking the flow of water to the Frederiksted area. Water maintenance personnel were dispatched immediately to remove the malfunctioned valve and restore service into Frederiksted town.

WAPA apologizes to its customers for the inconvenience of the unscheduled water interruption this weekend and continues to diligently restore water storage levels for the safety and security of Virgin Islands residents as the territory quickly approaches the height of hurricane season.

Additionally, WAPA is aware of customer complaints of a malfunctioning feature of its telephone system when reporting water outages this past weekend and will immediately work to rectify this problem. Water emergencies after 5 p.m. can always be reported to the Line Department’s emergency number at 773-0150.