RESIDENTS of farming communities in South St Elizabeth can breathe a collective sigh of relief, with news that bauxite company Alpart, despite deciding to shut down operations at its Nain processing plant, will continue to supply water.

“We intend to sustain all our social projects and will continue to supply water,” Alpart’s corporate communications manager, Lance Neita, told the Sunday Observer.

The company announced earlier this month that it would cease operation and stop processing bauxite on May 15. As a result 1,000 temporary workers and 800 permanent staff have been made redundant.

The South St Elizabeth community, the backbone of the country’s agriculture sector, drives production in domestic food crops annually. With the announcement of Alpart’s closure, residents in the area were concerned that water supplied by Alpart would dry up.

According to former Member of Parliament for South St Elizabeth Lenworth Blake, farmers in the area would suffer terribly if Alpart cut off the water supply.

“Water is our biggest problem,” said Blake, who operates a hydroponics farm at the nearby community of Downs.

Blake has blamed the National Water Commission (NWC) for poor water management in the South St Elizabeth region.

“The NWC can do much better with the way they handle water management in the area,” said Blake, who accused unscrupulous farmers of diverting water from the pipelines to their farms.

For about 40 years, Alpart has piped water from a well in the nearby district of Pepper for cooling down operations at the plant. The bauxite company has also installed pipelines to allow districts on the immediate boundaries of the plant to access piped water.

The surplus water is distributed in surrounding districts free of cost, but residents have to foot the cost of transportation.

At Bull Savannah, some 20 miles away, residents pay up to $6,000 for a truckload of water.

Paul McCarthy operates a water truck and supplies water to residents in the communities surrounding the Nain plant. McCarthy was extremely happy with Alpart’s decision to make the water flow.

“If they had stopped it we would have to pay to get water from Pepper and people couldn’t afford it,” McCarthy said.