Hundreds of families in a Santa Ana condo project have had to deal with dry pipes, said a representative from the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados.    The project is Avalon Condominiums,

said Eduardo Solano, the representative of Acueductos y Alcantarillados who is working on the case. The project developers were only allowed water for construction and people were not even supposed to be living in the condominium project until it was completed, said Solano.Instead, families moved into the condominiums as each building was completed. The Avalon project is constructed of numerous buildings, some of which are now complete and have people living in them. There are about 350 condominiums in the two buildings which are part of Avalon Country Club, said a project administrator Thursday.  

Although Solano said he could not confirm the owners reasons for moving people into the condominiums early, he speculated it could have been to finance the project.

Frank Rodríguez, a sales representative at Avalon, said that the water was shut off for four days and that it was simply to amplify the current water pipe by 50 percent. There are no problems with the water company and currently the water situation is back to normal, said Rodríguez. As to why people were living in the project before it was complete, Rodríguez said that the project is basically complete except for a few minor details.

Solano said he did not know exactly who the owner of the
project is although he later said he was working with the owners to fix the water problem. The Avalon Plaza Web site lists Grupo Sur Inversiones as the project developer and Van Der Laat y Jiménez S.A. as the construction company.  

Residents who contacted A.M. Costa Rica about water problems in the condominium wished to go unnamed. One person said someone had actually fallen ill from drinking the water.  Rodríguez said the water was not supposed to be drunk while workers were enlarging the pipes but now everything is back to normal.

Solano explained that the company was permitted to use a 19 mm or three-quarter-inch pipe to pump in water for construction but that someone had manipulated the tubes to interconnect with a large pipe that belongs to Acueductos y Alcantarillados.

Last week the water company came in with police officers and shut off the water altogether, said Solano. The owners of Avalon Condominiums had to pay for the extra water and pay for the installation of the three-quarter-inch pipe. Now once again people have water, said Solano but although the pipe is small for such a large amount of people, said Solano. “I imagine that it won’t be a sufficient amount,” said the water representative.

Nagel Yakomoto, the functioning project administrator, said Thursday that the condominiums do have drinkable water and that the problem is with the water company not the project developers.

Years ago when the project initiated, developers asked the water company for a large pipeline, said Ms. Yakomoto. That pipe was never provided, she said, and people wanted to move in right away.