SPRING GARDEN, St James — By the end of this month more parishes will have restrictions placed on water usage as the country wilts under unrelenting heat and dry conditions.

“The prohibition orders are in the east but it is very likely that Clarendon and Manchester will be added to the list, based on what we would have seen for rainfall in terms of cumulative numbers in July,” Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda explained Wednesday afternoon during a rural water supply-hosted event in Spring Garden, St James.

“I expect that at the end of August I will get a recommendation that sees the prohibition moving further west,” he added.

There has been limited rainfall across the country, fallout from the El Niño weather pattern which has wrapped sections of the world in a blanket of heat, leading to challenging drought conditions.

During what he called a frank discussion with Jamaicans, Samuda said Wednesday that the country is in the throes of what could be the worst drought it has ever experienced.

“The last time we had an El Niño phenomenon with this extreme level of conditions, there was global famine. This is not us trying to scare people, but it is saying to us that we have a lot of work to do in a number of categories,” he said.

Since August 17, Kingston, St Andrew, St Thomas, St Mary, Portland, St Ann, and St Catherine have been under prohibition orders that prevent people from legally using or causing water supplied by the National Water Commission (NWC) to be used for non-essential or unusual purposes.

Prohibitions include irrigation or watering of gardens, lawns, grounds, and farms; refilling or supplying of ponds or swimming pools and/or for use other than normal domestic services such as drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, and sanitation; washing of vehicles with the use of a hose; watering or washing of roadways, pavements, paths, garages, or out-rooms; along with any activity requiring excessive or unusual quantities of water.

Samuda on Wednesday cited Meteorological Service of Jamaica data that paints a dire picture. Projections are for well below the 30-year average rainfall in September and October.

“Jamaica operates in what you call a bimodal rainfall pattern. It means we get intense rainfall in May and we start to get intense rainfall at the end of August through September into about the third or fourth week of October; and those are your two main rainfall periods,” the minister explained.

“If you go into your dry period which comes after, having not had any rainfall, you understand the extent of the challenge. The Hermitage Dam in Kingston is at 31 per cent [Wednesday] morning and declining by about one per cent per day,” he disclosed.

In addition, he said, more than 80 NWC systems are seeing lower inflows than required to service their customers.

It is within this context that Samuda again called on each Jamaican to be “an ambassador for conservation”.

“Because you don’t know when next rain is going to come [when you have] an extreme drought, it means when the children go into school, whether they are at schools that are connected to NWC or not, we have to put up the signs and we have to drill into their heads and ask them to drill into their friends’ heads: don’t waste the water when you go into the bathroom,” he advised during the event where he gave an update on the Western Water Resilience System.

“We don’t want when the drought eventually reaches islandwide, that you have just gotten the water and you’re just getting used to the comfort and then the comfort is no more because the springs and the sources run dry,” said Samuda.

Residents of nine communities in south St James are now the beneficiaries of the upgraded system, which will provide up to 15,000 gallons of potable water daily. It has been a significant investment, with $27 million spent on the most recent phase alone.