One of the houses that have been evacuated in the Lima community due to rising waters. (Photo: Mark Cummings)

LIMA, St James -The St James Health Department has issued a warning to residents in the flood-ravaged communities of Lima and Canaan in East Central St James, telling them not to venture into the large bodies of stagnant water in the area because it is highly contaminated.

"The water is contaminated and there is the potential for an outbreak of disease. So we would not want to risk anybody going into it; so we have advised them to stay away from it," acting chief public health inspector for the parish, Elsa Sommerville, explained.

The contamination, she said, was due mainly to raw sewage that washed out of pit latrines in the communities due to the flooding.
The health official said that her agency was now conducting vector control measures in the area, but stressed that this would not be enough to prevent the likelihood of an outbreak of waterborne diseases.

"The solution has to be a stakeholders issue," Sommerville said. "It is not something alone the health department can do, and so I am now in the process of talking with other stakeholders with a view of having a meeting to come up with the solutions," she added.

At the same time, Member of Parliament for the area, Ed Bartlett, has called on the relevant government agencies to move speedily to address the "worrying" problem in the affected communities.

"The ministries of health, water and housing and the ministry of environment need to send down a team immediately to review the entire situation there, and to determine what steps are to be taken to ensure that the people in the area are protected against any health risk," Bartlett said.

According to Bartlett, the communities were flooded because the aquifers in the Queen of Spain Valley - located in the parishes of Trelawny and St James - had exceeded their limits.

Since October, a number of communities in St James and the neighbouring parish of Trelawny have been severely affected by flooding.

In St James, at least 10 families have had to evacuate their homes as a result of flooding. In addition, more than 150 people from the Wakefield areas of Congo Town and Bliss Pastures, Trelawny, are now staying with relatives and friends due to rising waters in the communities.

An assessment of the situation in Bliss Pastures and Congo Town, carried out two weeks ago by the Water Resources Authority (WRA), revealed that the heavy rainfall associated with Hurricane Wilma, as well as tropical depressions, had caused the limestone aquifers within the Queen of Spain Valley to be filled with water.This, the WRA said, led to the flooding of the communities.

"The flooding in Bliss Pastures is caused primarily by water rising from the limestone aquifers and feeding the Wakefield Pond, which in turn overflows," the WRA explained.
Since the Wilma rains, groundwater levels had risen between 12 and 15 metres above the pre-Wilma levels, the WRA added.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World