By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

KAGMAN High School yesterday dismissed its more than 700 students because of a water outage in the area.
School principal Alfred Ada said he made the decision after consulting with Education Commissioner David Borja.
“We dismissed all classes at 12 noon because we had had no water since the morning,” he told Variety in a telephone interview.
He said an underground pipe with a major leak in the Kagman 3 area was being fixed by the Commonwealth Utilities Corp yesterday.
Ada said despite the lack of water on campus, “still we went ahead with our classes until we decided to dismiss our students.”
He said notification was received by the school yesterday morning from CUC.
The water outage also affected Chacha Oceanview Junior High and Kagman Elementary School.
Chacha and Kagman Elementary finished classes on time yesterday as they had enough water stored in their tanks.
Kagman High has a small water tank that only holds a half-day’s supply of water.
In an interview, CUC spokeswoman Pam Mathis said their crew will work to ensure that the leak is fixed.
Mathis said to avoid disruption at schools, CUC informed them of alternative ways on how to get water supply for the day.
She said they contacted the mayor’s office to ensure continued water delivery service.
The water pipe was damaged by sharp rocks in the area.
Mathis said the pipe was 16 inches in diameter and several thousands of gallons of water were lost when it broke shortly after 5 a.m. yesterday.
Angry residents who were getting ready to go to work and preparing their children for school called CUC to complain about the unannounced water outage.
Mathis said CUC immediately dispatched a team to fix the problem in Kagman 3.
The crew was to have fixed the pipe by 8 last night.
Kagman village sits on bedrock and past earth movements in the area have affected CUC water pipes.
Mathis said the water pipes in Kagman are fairly new because the village only started seeing more residents in the 1990s.
(With Gemma Q. Casas)