THE Commonwealth Utilities Corp. on Thursday “commissioned and placed into service” a new 750,000-gallon pre-stressed concrete water tank in San Vicente.
CUC said the federally funded water tank will provide more reliable water services to San Vicente, upper Dandan homestead, Naftan and Obyan.
A CUC team led by acting chief of engineer for the water/wastewater division Larry Manacop, and division manager Yvonne Ogumuro, including CUC project engineer K. Alley Reyes, and engineers Edgar Tuazon and Dennis Formalejo turned on the waterline around 3 p.m. Thursday.
The CUC team also made manual adjustments to the tank’s pressure-sustaining valve to help pressurize the higher elevation areas in San Vicente.
According to CUC, the areas served by the water tank may experience intermittent services over the next 24 hours as CUC makes adjustments to the water distribution system.
“It’s a great project…and it will bring improvements to the CUC water system and improve water services to the consumers in this tank service area,” CUC Executive Director Gary Camacho said in an official statement.
The water tank was constructed by GPPC Inc. and funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he added.
“The project is the third pre-stressed concrete water tank constructed and funded through EPA,” he said. “The Papago water tank being the first, then the As Terlaje water tank and now the new San Vicente water tank,” Camacho said.
“Additionally, as part of [our] resiliency program, CUC is working on the designs for the construction of three new pre-stressed concrete water tanks for Kagman, Dandan, and Tinian…. These new water tanks are funded through the [federal] Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief.”
According to R. Kelley Reyes, San Vicente water tank project engineer, the “notice-to-proceed-construction was issued in June 2020, and construction started around December 2020 so it was completed in about a year.”
CUC’s acting chief of engineer for the water/wastewater division, Larry Manacop, said due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were some delays in the shipment of materials, and there was also a construction bidding protest that had to be resolved.
In addition, “The project went through the process of environmental clearance due to the presence of protected species in the area.”
Manacop commended GPPC for “working with CUC hand in hand” in the completion of the project.
“We’re moving toward CUC’s goal of providing 24-hour water service throughout the island in line with CUC’s resiliency program,” he added.
According to CUC water/wastewater division manager Yvonne Ogumoro, multiple water wells feed the San Vicente water tank.
“There are different feed lines — we have water from Kagman, that’s where the majority of the supply comes from. We also have wells from Papago and San Vicente that feed this tank.”
According to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., the new 750,000-gallon San Vicente water tank will provide more reliable water services to San Vicente, upper Dandan homestead, Naftan and Obyan.
Commonwealth Utilities Corp. field staffer Gabriel Dela Cruz turns the feed line valve of the new San Vicente water tank on Thursday while CUC water/wastewater acting chief engineer Larry Manacop makes adjustments for the other feedlines and CUC project engineer R. Kelley checks the pressure on a sustaining valve.
GPPC project engineer Hercules Siaga turns a valve to adjust the pressure of the outgoing water flow from the new San Vicente water tank while CUC engineers Edward Tuazon and Dennis Formalejo and a CUC field staffer look on.
652-654 gallons per minute flowed from the San Vicente concrete water tank to the service areas on Thursday.
