By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

THE Navy is again shutting down its Fena water treatment plant at 8 a.m. today.
The treatment plant will be off-line for eight hours to accommodate maintenance work needed in the plant, the Navy’s public affairs office said.
Southern areas, especially the villages of Santa Rita and Agat, may be affected anew by the Navy shutdown, which began last Feb. 26 and continues today, March 5, and March 7.
According to the Navy, it was able to conduct earlier outages with no disruption of water service to the residents of Agat and Santa Rita by maintaining partial production from springs.
Minimal impacts are again expected for the remaining shut-offs.
The Navy assured that water from its reservoir tanks will continue to supply Guam’s electrical plants at Cabras, Piti and Tanguisson, as well as firefighting systems and U.S. Naval Hospital Guam.
The shutdowns have been scheduled over a period of several days to allow for sufficient recovery of stored water and to minimize the inconvenience to customers.
According to the Navy, the scheduled outages are necessary to facilitate upgrades to the Navy water treatment plant which will improve treatment processes, modernize process control instrumentation, and provide redundancy.
The Navy is working closely with the Guam Waterworks Authority and village mayors during these upgrades to minimize negative impacts and to ensure residents are promptly notified.
As in the previous shutdowns, GWA has been busy storing up its water tanks to minimize the inconvenience to southern residents.
Although the Navy plant will begin to get water back starting at 4 p.m., GWA said it takes three hours to fully restore water in the system.
GWA has also issued a water conservation notice for the whole island as the diversion of water from northern tankers to help out the south may affect the whole island.