On the afternoon of this Friday, July 24, the street Tajaraste will be reopened to traffic, one of the main thoroughfares in the Argana Alta neighborhood, once the repair work on the serious breakdown in the wastewater discharge pipe and the resurfacing of the roadway are completed.
The rupture, the eighth to affect this pipeline in recent months, caused a large sinkhole on Thursday morning near the intersection of Campoamor and Tajaraste streets, in the vicinity of the Argana Alta School, in addition to significant discharges of sewage that affected residents, businesses, and public spaces.
The Arrecife City Council has disseminated this Friday the images captured by the Local Police's video surveillance system, which show the exact moment the pipe burst and the road began to sink. According to the Local Police's operational center, the rupture occurred at 00:35 on Thursday, at which point officers activated the assistance protocol for residents and alerted the Water Consortium to intervene in the breakdown.
After the pipeline was repaired by the Water Consortium, the affected section was resurfaced this midday. The street will reopen to traffic this afternoon, once the pavement has reached the necessary consistency.
The mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León, who visited the area on both Thursday and Friday to assess the progress of the work and attend to residents and business owners, has insisted on the need to replace this fiber pipe, which the Consortium itself has acknowledged as obsolete. The mayor has been demanding since the beginning of his term the installation of a new pipeline through an external area of Argana Alta to prevent continuous breakdowns from continuing to affect streets and homes.
He has also requested that the Water Consortium expedite the execution of this new discharge pipe through an urgent procedure, similar to what is being done with other hydraulic infrastructures on the island.
The wastewater discharges necessitated cleaning and disinfection work in the affected areas, tasks that, according to the City Council, have already been completed.
Yonathan de León emphasized that "we have suffered greatly from these constant breakdowns in the sanitation network, and the Consortium must act to bring them up to date, as is also the case with the water supply network."