Water crisis

Residents in St Elizabeth, Manchester cry for potable water

Sunday, February 07, 2010

MANDEVILLE, Manchester -- The cry for potable water is increasing in the south central parishes of Manchester and St Elizabeth as the seasonal drought takes hold and inadequate resources restrict the ability of the authorities to respond.

The word on the ground is that the winding down of the Government's Rapid Response trucking operation and an inadequate number of water trucks have made the situation worse.

To further complicate matters, the collapse of a National Water Commission (NWC) pump at Pepper just below the St Elizabeth/Manchester border has left much of Mandeville -- which at the best of times has daily water lock-offs -- and surrounding communities without piped water for large portions of each day.

The NWC's Ava Marie Ingram told the Sunday Observer late last week that "rehabilitation" work at the Pepper facility should be completed in "another three weeks". She said the delay was partly because of the need to source parts from overseas.

In a release, the councillor for the Mandeville Division Sally Porteous (JLP) called on the Minister of Water Horace Chang "to treat the situation as a matter of urgency ...". She expressed hope that "the situation here will be given the same priority as the Corporate Area".

Yesterday, Chang held out very little hope that the cash-strapped Government would be able to provide immediate relief. He noted that the priority in Manchester was to get the pump at Pepper "back up" and that the NWC was currently spending $3-4 million monthly on the trucking of water in Manchester alone.

The "emergency" situation in St Elizabeth had led to an allocation of $2 million to that parish council for the trucking of water, he said. But he appeared to suggest that not much more could be done in the short term because there was "just no money".

Chang said that only a few of the Rapid Response trucks -- which were in the process of being divested to workers -- were functioning after developing crippling mechanical problems.

Political representatives in St Elizabeth and Manchester say the impact of the drought is worse in those communities which depend entirely on rain water harvesting. There has been little or no rain in most areas of St Elizabeth, Manchester and the wider southern Jamaica since the first few days of January.

"Almost all of the district (catchment) tanks are empty or almost empty, and the tanks in people's yards are all drying up," said Michael Peart, Member of Parliament (PNP) for South Manchester. "A lot of people have to be begging and scrounging for water," he said.

An inadequacy of trucks, the closure of the Brooks Park water loading bay "because it was disturbing the neighbourhood" forcing truckers to travel "all the way to Porus for water", and the "running down" of the Victoria Town Water Supply Scheme because pipes have not been replaced have exacerbated the situation, said Peart.

Mayor of Mandeville Brenda Ramsay (PNP) said the council was "trying its best" to truck water to "parish tanks and wayside tanks". But, she said, the capacity was limited since the parish council "has only one truck" and the NWC "is not in any better position".

In St Elizabeth, where well below 50 per cent of the citizenry have water piped to their homes, the situation is said to be even worse.

"Traditionally, we have had a problem this time of year, mostly in the south, but such is the extent of this drought that everywhere is crying for water, including the north," Mayor and chairman of the parish council Jeremy Palmer (JLP) told the Sunday Observer.

Ernest Hendricks (JLP), councillor for the New Market Division, agreed.

"In the past, we up here in the north would get on-and-off rainfall but not so this year," said Hendricks. The councillor said all the schools in his division were now out of water. People were calling him and appealing for trucked water "day and night", he said.

In the hard-hit Myersville Division of South East St Elizabeth, Councillor Richard Parchment (PNP) declared that "almost every tank is dry". Those with water were sharing with their neighbours.

Since the seasonal drought usually lasts until April/May, the situation was dire, Parchment said.

The councillor cited the Red Bank area as an example of the severity of the situation. "Right now I can only get two truckloads of water up there per month to Red Bank, but if I get 20 truckloads up there it wouldn't be enough," he said.

He noted that the two trucks now functioning for the St Elizabeth Parish Council were totally inadequate. Efforts by the council to hire private trucks were in vain, since truckers were being asked to wait too long to get paid. Instead, said Parchment, private truckers were working overtime to truck water to those citizens with the ability to pay "in advance".

Parchment repeated recent calls for the Government to develop a programme which would saturate communities with concrete catchment tanks since "getting piped water to most of these communities is just a pipe dream".

He complained that the Alpart loading bay at Nain was overworked with "30-40 trucks lining up" at any given time to fill up with water while the state-run Pepper loading bay was only open to the public two days per week.

Parchment was also critical of the NWC, noting that the parish council was being forced to buy water to serve some residents who were actually customers of the state-run water supplier.

Ingram told the Sunday Observer that trucking was being done by the NWC at "exorbitant costs" but that resource constraints were a major headache. Only one NWC truck was operational in St Elizabeth, she said. The phasing out of the Rapid Response Unit with which the NWC had "collaborated" was a major setback, she said.

In SW St Elizabeth, Member of Parliament Chris Tufton said the water shortage brought on by the seasonal drought had been made worse by the drying up of the Parottee well. A new well at Hopewell -- said to be rich in water -- is to be commissioned soon.

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