By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

THE Guam Waterworks Authority is busy preparing for the series of water outages scheduled by the Navy for its Fena water treatment plant.
The Navy has scheduled a series of shutdowns of its water treatment plant starting 8 a.m. Tuesday, with additional shutdowns scheduled for 8 a.m. on Feb. 28, March 2, 5 and 7.
According to GWA public information officer Heidi Ballendorf, the villages of Agat and Santa Rita will be affected by the outage.
“At GWA, we have been working to keep tanks in those villages full so we won’t fully run out of water during these water outage times,” Ballendorf said.
She added that the Navy is predicting an eight-hour shutdown on the scheduled dates.
Although the Navy is scheduled to begin its work at 8 a.m. each morning, Ballendorf said it takes approximately three hours to drain the Clearwell of its water.
During that process, the contractor working on the maintenance will send the water from the Clearwell to the villages of Agat and Santa Rita.
“Therefore, residents of those villages can expect a possible drop in water pressure or even some water loss beginning at 11 a.m. and it may continue until 7 p.m. each of those evenings,” Ballendorf said.
Although the Navy plant will begin to get water back starting at 4 p.m., Ballendorf said it takes three hours to fully restore water in the system.
If residents still have water problems after 7 p.m. in the evening, Ballendorf said they should call the GWA trouble desk at 646-4211.
According to the Navy, the scheduled outages are necessary to facilitate Navy water treatment plant upgrades, which will improve treatment processes and modernize process control instrumentation.
The Navy is working closely with GWA and village mayors during these upgrades to minimize negative impacts and to ensure residents are promptly notified.
The Navy assured that water from the Navy’s reservoir tanks will continue to supply Guam’s electrical plants at Cabras, Piti and Tanguisson, as well as essential firefighting systems and U.S. Naval Hospital Guam.