The Guma Valley Water Company and its partners have successfully completed the replacements of the leaking Scour and Gate Valves at the Guma Dam Tunnel at Mile 13.

According to Guma the replacement of these valves that were installed in the mid 1960s is one of the Works packages under the Freetown Water Supply Rehabilitation Project funded by UKAid.

The replacement of the leaking Scour and Gates Valves at the Guma Dam is expected to save about 6 million liters of water per day, enough water to serve 50,000 people

The main objective of the Freetown Water Supply Rehabilitation Project is to improve the reliability of the water supply for the citizens of Freetown, through rehabilitation of the water supply infrastructure and reduction of leakages for improved and reliable access to safe water supply.

Planning, Research and Development Manager of Guma Valley Water Company, Ing Ibrahim C. Bah, said the replacement of the Scour and Gate Valves is another major milestone reached by Guma. He added that the replaced valves have been seriously leaking, leading to loss of millions of liters of water every day.

“It was not safe to do scouring of the dam because of the old age of the scour valve, but with the new valves, the risk of the valves failing or not functioning correctly has been reduced significantly for the next fifty years, at least” Ing Bah asserted.

Over 90% of the water supply to Freetown is supplied from the Guma Dam reservoir and Main Water Treatment Plant at Mile 13.  The Guma Dam was built in the 60s and can only reliably provide water supply to the population it was built for at that time around 800,000. The current population of Freetown approaches 2 million.

The rehabilitation project will increase sustainable access to water supply in Freetown, with the expected impact being a reduction of morbidity and mortality rates associated with incidences of diarrhea, typhoid and other water-borne diseases.

Meanwhile, work is ongoing to replace 3.2Km of aged transmission pipe line from Mile 13 to Hamilton.