Thousands of residents and businesses across northern Saint Lucia are set to benefit from a major upgrade to the region’s water network as the Water and Sewerage Company Inc. (WASCO) prepares to begin construction on its long-awaited Northern Pipeline Project in August.
The project will replace a 40-year-old, 14-inch cast iron pipeline with a larger, more resilient 20-inch ductile iron main stretching from the Bonne Terre Gap to the Gros Islet Gap. More importantly for customers, WASCO says the massive infrastructure upgrade will be carried out without disrupting the area’s day-to-day water supply.
The announcement comes as northern communities continue to rely on an aging pipeline that has served the island since the early 1980s and is now showing the effects of decades of wear.
Speaking during a media briefing on Wednesday, Head of WASCO’s Project Management Unit, Maurice Norville, assured customers that the existing pipeline will remain in operation while the new line is installed alongside it.
“It’s not a case where we’re going to be removing the existing pipeline. The new pipeline is going to be offset a bit from the existing one. So, the existing one will remain in operation throughout the construction period,” Norville explained.
He acknowledged that brief water interruptions will be unavoidable when the new pipeline is connected to the existing network. However, those outages are expected only during the final stages of the project, with WASCO committing to provide advance notice before any planned service disruptions.
Norville revealed that the project experienced initial delays due to land acquisition matters, which were resolved in collaboration with the Department of Physical Planning. The department has since completed the required Gazette notifications to affected landowners, while survey teams have already mapped approximately half of the project corridor.
With the pre-construction phase now complete, WASCO says the project is ready to move into full construction.
“We have completed the process in terms of the contract awards. We have the supervising consultant on board, so that is FDL Consult, and the contractor, which is CIE. Those agreements have been signed and commencement of the works is imminent. You may even see some activity on the ground once you’re on the Castries-Gros Islet Highway,” Norville said.
Funded entirely by WASCO, the project represents one of the utility company’s most significant infrastructure investments in recent years. Once completed in December 2026, the new pipeline is expected to strengthen water reliability, improve service resilience and support the growing residential, tourism and commercial demands of northern Saint Lucia for decades to come.
