BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth — Parish councillors in St Elizabeth are again urging that ways be found to help local people build concrete rain water catchment and storage tanks in order to alleviate chronic water problems in the parish.

At last Thursday’s monthly meeting of the parish council, it was pointed out that the regular dry season from late November to April was approaching its height and the cry for water was intensifying.

The pressure was likely to be even greater this year, they said, since the traditional wet months of September and October had produced far less rain than usual.

To make matters worse, the councillors said, several water schemes supervised by the State-run water distribution company, National Water Commission (NWC) were performing poorly and the parish council with very limited resources was often being asked to truck water to those areas.

“Even as we speak, people are calling asking for water,” said Richard Parchment (PNP) Myersville Division.

He urged the chairman of the parish council and Mayor of Black River, Jeremy Palmer (JLP, Pedro Plains Division), to exploit his “good relationship” with Water Minister Horace Chang in seeking to develop a plan for concrete water tanks.

Parchment said that while various “black tank” schemes had proven useful in terms of storage, such tanks provided very little capacity for rain water harvesting. “We need to go back to (large) concrete 15,000 and 20,000 gallon tanks… it is amazing what many people would be able to do if they had concrete tanks,” he said.

Over decades, such tanks have been the main source of water supply for much of rural Jamaica but as the NWC gradually extended its reach, emphasis on rain water harvesting eroded.

Palmer, in approving Parchment’s comments, noted that the “idea of NWC reaching into all communities in St Elizabeth is for the next generation”. He observed that only 47 per cent of St Elizabeth’s residents receive water “through the pipes”.

“What we need is for people to harvest rain water and store it, and that can only be done in a concrete tank,” he said.