BOUNTY HALL, Trelawny — Former mayor of Falmouth Councillor Jonathan Bartley (Jamaica Labour Party, Wakefield Division) is appealing to president of the National Water Commission (NWC) Mark Barnett and minister with portfolio responsibility for water, Senator Mathew Samuda, to launch a thorough investigation into “the cause for the perennial water woes” affecting Bounty Hall residents.

Last Friday, Bartley complained bitterly that NWC customers in the community had not received any water in their pipes for nearly three weeks.

“I am appealing to Mr Mark Barnett and the minister of water to try and investigate what is happening. Please look into the Bounty Hall situation. Why the people have been treated this way? They are human beings and they need water like anyone else,” a fed up Bartley, who is a former NWC employee, expressed.

In fact, Bartley, who resides in the community, claimed that for the past five decades, Bounty Hall has been experiencing intermittent water shortages.

He lashed the utility company for prioritising the supply of the tourism resort city of Montego Bay with water while seemingly neglecting some Trelawny communities, including Bounty Hall.

A senior NWC personnel in western Jamaica, who is familiar with the situation, told the Jamaica Observer West that the lack of water in the community is due to high turbidity levels.

Turbidity is the state or quality of water being cloudy or opaque, usually because of suspended matter or stirred-up sediment.

This often follows a period of heavy rainfall and impedes the treatment process of the water.

But Bartley claimed that while the NWC is claiming that turbidity is affecting the pumping of water from the Martha Brae treatment plant to the reservoir in Bounty Hall, the commodity is being transported in lines from the same source to supply Montego Bay.

But the senior NWC personnel denied that water has been supplied to Montego Bay from that source over the past three weeks.

Arguing that the solution to Bounty Hall’s water crisis is simple, Bartley is recommending that the utility company regulates the flow of water to allow the precious commodity to “reach the level of five feet in the Bounty Hall reservoir at which point it should be pumped to the community.”

“The solution is if they care about us as their customers, they can back up the water down by Salt Marsh for even four hours and bring this [water storage] reservoir to the level where Bounty Hall can get water. Once it reaches there, they can come and turn on the pump and pump to the area,” Bartley said.

“But once water in the reservoir is below that level, it just gravity feeds to Montego Bay because the Montego Bay line is below the level.”

On Wednesday, Bounty Hall resident Shermette Jones told the Observer West that water returned to the community “a couple days ago,” but she predicted that it will be gone again shortly.

“It is terrible and we are fed up. When you call the NWC they give you all sorts of excuses,” she stressed.

“They (NWC) have no regard for us because water will be out for up to two weeks and when you call them they can’t say when the water will be back. Secondly, they don’t have any truck to serve water when there is none in our pipes. So there is no hope, they just hold us hostage and we have to wait.”