KINGSTON, Jamaica — The National Irrigation Commission (NIC) says it has restored irrigation services to most schemes in the three regions which were impacted by the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 3.

According to Public Relations Specialist with the NIC, Christeen Forbes, only two schemes in Clarendon and three in St Elizabeth are still without irrigation services.

“Currently, the areas that are without irrigation services are the two schemes in Vernamfield, Clarendon and Upper Rhymesbury, and three schemes in St Elizabeth. We require a great amount of power to operate our pumping stations in those areas and there are widespread power outages in St Elizabeth. However, the NIC team is in St Elizabeth now trying to get up the pumps and explore other options, to see how quickly we can restore service to some sections of the parish,” she said.

Forbes said that all stations in the eastern region are now operational and supplying water to farmers in St Catherine, Portland, and St Thomas.

In the central region, full service has been restored to customers in New Forest and Duff House in Manchester.

For the western region, full service has been restored to Braco and Clarks Town in Trelawny and Seven Rivers in St James.

Forbes said service will be restored to the Hounslow, Beacon E, Little Park and Holland Irrigation Schemes in St Elizabeth as soon as power is supplied to those areas.

“We do understand that the farmers and the crops would have been devastated and some of them are without water. To mitigate… this, the NIC has ramped up its trucked water services across several communities. The NIC stands with its customers at this time and remains fully committed to providing quality service,” she said.

Meanwhile, Forbes noted that none of the offices suffered any significant damage, but said solar sites in St Elizabeth and Manchester were affected.

The solar sites form part of the NIC’s incorporation of climate-smart technologies in their water production and distribution process.

This involves the installation and strengthening of the commission’s solar capacity to some of their stations.

“We are adding solar panels, and for future projects and the Essex Valley Agricultural Development project, solar systems are mandatory for those, so it’s something that we are really rolling out. Some of the solar panels were significantly damaged and some of them were blown away off the site. The fencing, as well, saw significant damage. In St Catherine and some sections of Clarendon, there were several reports of downed trees on some of our canal infrastructure. The team has since been working to clear those trees from our canal systems,” Forbes said.

“It didn’t cause any major disruption in terms of the flow of water, but you know you wouldn’t want to have trees blocking the canal, because it may slow the flow of the water, but those are things that we the team would have been working on in the days after hurricane Beryl,” she added.

— JIS