Guinea Grass Villagers to Protest Water Board Over Billing Disputes

Residents of Guinea Grass Village are raising the alarm over what they say is poor management of their new water system. After decades of limited access, the village received a metered water supply in December 2024, a move residents welcomed. But that relief quickly turned to frustration, with some households reporting water bills as high as twenty‑two thousand gallons in just one month. Vice President of the Guinea Grass Development Committee, Enio Lopez, claims villagers were promised a trained water board to manage the system, but that never happened. Now, accusing officials of mismanagement and unfair billing, residents are planning a peaceful protest this Sunday, demanding accountability, fair charges, and new leadership to oversee the village’s water supply.

 

On the Phone: Enio Lopez, Vice President, Guinea Grass Development Committee

“The implementation of meters is a good thing. That is for the proper accountability, water usage, and for the conservation of this precious liquid that God has given us. So we are in favor of meter implementation, but what we. Don’t like and what the community, and I will say that ninety to ninety-five percent of the community is discontent and they are claiming, and the public outcry is that the meter system implementation has been done in a way that has produced problems instead of solutions. We were promised that a new board was going to be appointed. They were going to be trained because it’s a new system. But nothing of that has been clear to the community. Nothing of that has been explained to the community or there has not been any feedback, in other words, to the community about who are the members of the new water board because we are seeing the same thing. There hasn’t been any change. And then we have well-educated people in our community. We have in our community. Qualified persons with a great capacity and ability to manage and to get involved in the affairs of the water board.”