THE prevailing drought conditions have left Jamaica in search of options to safeguard its water security, but cloud seeding is not one of them — not yet anyway.

The consensus among local stakeholders is that cloud seeding — which involves spreading silver iodide aerosols into the upper part of clouds to try to stimulate rain — is not the answer. Among the reasons for this is the fact that there are no guarantees with the use of the technology.

“Cloud seeding is an expensive and unsure technique that is used,” said Basil Fernandez, managing director of the Water Resources Authority (WRA). “You have no control over whether the rain falls or not, or where it falls. A small island like ours, you can seed a cloud and then the rain falls somewhere else or it doesn’t fall at all.”

Dr Michael Taylor, who heads the Physics Department at the University of the West Indies, agreed. Given the uncertainties surrounding the technique, Taylor said if and when Jamaica decides to go ahead with it, the process will have to be informed by research.

“Cloud seeding in my mind is a two-pronged approach. It is an operational campaign, which involves the actual flying into the clouds and doing the seeding, but that must be accompanied by a research campaign, which dictates the conditions of the operational campaign. So, in other words, you need to know the type of clouds that you have on any given day or at any given time of the day,” he told Environment Watch.

“We did it (cloud seeding) in the ’70s, so I am sure we could do it operationally. But we are not carrying out the research to guide it. So at the present moment, the extent of how efficient a campaign would be is questionable. We don’t have the research side going. Also, the capacity to do the research, we would also have to look into. Doing it right now, the recommendation would be no, because you might not get value for the effort,” added the expert, who was among those consulted by Water and Housing Minister Dr Horace Chang on the issue recently.

Professor Anthony Chen, himself a physicist and noted climate researcher, shared Fernandez’s and Taylor’s view on cloud seeding.

“Cloud seeding is a bit uncertain. What the experts that we have contacted say is that it is not the right time for cloud seeding. They say that we should try and do it when it is more conducive to raining, which is maybe May or so. But by then, we will have rain anyway,” said Chen, who was also among those consulted by Chang. “The advice to the minister is that it would probably not be worthwhile now to try cloud seeding. At a later stage, we can try experimenting with it, but not right now because the clouds are not conducive to cloud seeding.”

Fernandez has instead recommended that, among other things, Jamaicans be made to pay more for water, thus encouraging conservation to help secure the commodity over the long term.

“We need to use pricing to aid conservation. We need to price water, the true price of water. The tariff that National Water Commission (NWC) now has doesn’t allow them to recover their capital cost and any significant amount for their operations or maintenance cost,” he told Environment Watch. “So we need to use pricing to force people to cut back on the use of water. So if you’re going to waste water then you will have to pay for it.”

Fernandez added that the NWC could also partner with customers to retrofit households to use less water.

“In terms of the demand side management, the utility company like the NWC could work something out with customers to say we will change out your flush toilet that uses so much water (such as) the heavy flush which uses three gallons to something that uses one gallon, and then give them some sort of rebate over time,” he said. “This has been done all over the world and they have saved a lot of water… In addition to that, you have less water going out to treat and (thus) limit the impact on the environment.”

Beyond that, Fernandez said the island needed to find ways to store more of its rainfall, including making it a requirement for developers.

“You do that when you approve a development. You put the conditions on there as to what the developer can do — leave green spaces that can allow a certain amount of infiltration and reduced runoff,” he said. “Just like how we could say every house must be guttered and the rain water stored in an underground cistern, such as in the United States or the British Virgin Islands (we can store rainwater) and use that water for (things like) flushing toilets, watering your lawn so we are not using treated city water for doing the things that untreated water can be used for.”

Chen agreed with Fernandez that finding ways to store rain water was critical.

“We do have enough rainfall; we just need to store it. We don’t have enough reservoirs to store it; so we can store it underground in the aquifers,” he said. “Basil Fernandez has said we should recharge our aquifers, that is, all the runoff that comes from rainfall. So instead of going into gullies and going out to sea, you put them back underground through sink holes and things like that.”

The WRA boss also said there is the need to improve communication to allow for better planning.

“We do have a Caricom agency in Barbados called the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology and they have been issuing some warnings and forecasts, but I don’t think people across the Caribbean have been taking any action and that brings us down to the problem of dissemination of information so that we can take early action,” he said.

Taylor, for his part, said planning based on the available information was critical if islands such as Jamaica are to endure such extreme weather as droughts.

“The problem we are facing is the lack of the rain last year coming into the beginning of this year. So it talks about planning and utilising science that is available to us already, because the drought towards the end of last year should not have taken us by surprise because we know it brings this type of result toward the end of our rainy season,” Taylor said. “The fact that we were taken so much by surprise and the lack of planning is part of the problem.”

Fernandez, in the interim, said there was also the need for a national conservation programme.

“I am not talking about something that happens when we don’t have any water. (Instead), you conserve all the time, and we go to what we call a demand management, which is basically that we manage what people are asking for,” he said. “We teach people about — and introduce in the development of new housing developments and that sort of thing — low-flush toilets, shower heads… and ensure that we conserve water as much as possible. So we actually reduce the amount of water that people use. We put out the necessary information, let them understand what it will take and that they need to do it.”

Added Fernandez: “And then we need to look at systems that are more sustainable. We have seen Kingston grow at an alarming rate. We have a lot of housing going up in the upper watershed. Everybody put in concrete. Nobody wants to put grass or clear mud, so what happens is that you get all this water that runs out from the watershed, comes downstream, creates damage and we lose all water going out. We need to deal with the watershed issues.”

Taylor echoed his sentiments on the need for conservation.

“The end of April into May/June is when we get rain again,” said Taylor. “So we need to take the measures, whether it is water harvesting or other sources of water capture, or the measures for water recycling or trucking. Those are some of the steps that are being taken now, which will hopefully take us into when the rainy season will reappear.

“Those same measures are some of the things we need to think of for the long term so that we are not caught in this kind of cycle again. Water harvesting must be undertaken, both at the government level and the individual level, which is that when the water is there, you try to capture it.”

Added Taylor: “We also have to figure out other ways. There is, for example, underground water and we just need to reach it. We now need to begin to think about that. We now need to think about recycling. We have a stigma against using grey water. You don’t have to use it to drink, but it can be used for other purposes such as irrigation.”