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Water rationing looms
PHUKET: Phuket City Municipality is urging city residents to conserve water in the face of the on-going drought – the worst, it says, in the island’s history.
The Municipality has already been informed by the Phuket Office of the Irrigation Department, which operates the reservoir at Bang Wad, that it will not be able to provide the city with water after May 1 if the drought continues.
Phuket City Mayor Somjai Suwannasuppana told a press conference yesterday that dwindling supplies in the city’s eight supply sources – most of them abandoned tin mines under the control of private businesses – warranted an initial 10% reduction in pressure, effective immediately, in order to make supplies last.
The pressure decrease will last until May 1. If, by then, supplies have not been replenished by rainfall, then the Municipality will begin rationing water.
The rationing would involve pumping water at normal pressure rates from 5am-10am and 5pm-10pm daily, with flow reduced to a trickle outside these hours
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