Three weeks af­ter ca­ble thieves plunged the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Fair­field, Princes Town com­mu­ni­ty in­to dark­ness, res­i­dents are now fac­ing an­oth­er cri­sis af­ter ca­ble thieves crip­pled the com­mu­ni­ty’s waste­water treat­ment plant. The dis­cov­ery was made around 8.25 am yes­ter­day when an HDC em­ploy­ee found the plant, which ser­vices hun­dreds of house­holds, van­dalised.

The main elec­tri­cal con­trol of­fice was bro­ken in­to, and a quan­ti­ty of elec­tri­cal ca­bles con­nect­ed to con­trol pan­els, a stand­by gen­er­a­tor, and two step-up/step-down trans­form­ers were all miss­ing. Elec­tri­cal ca­bles were al­so miss­ing from two pan­el box­es at the rear of the plant. Po­lice said the thieves pried open one of the doors.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, res­i­dent Kevin Fras­er, leader of the Fair­field Com­mu­ni­ty Watch Group, said that around 8.30 am he was in­formed about the break-in at the plant and vis­it­ed the site, where he was told the ca­bles that keep the plant op­er­at­ing had been cut, crip­pling its op­er­a­tions. “I guess they did it for the cop­per,” he said.