Lavern D. Clarke, Builders Forum Co-ordinatorThe National Water Commission thinks it is losing about 70 per cent of the water it supplies to Portland, but really doesn't have the infrastructure in place for a true estimation of unaccounted for water (UFW) to the parish.
Nor does it know what portion is lost to leaks versus theft.
The parish's UFW figure is high compared to the aggregate 58 per cent UFW readings nationally, but other areas of the country have had similar recordings for example, Runaway Bay, whose 69 per cent UFW was reduced recently to about 50 per cent after the state water monopoly did some pipeline upgrades and implemented a leak detection plan.
OLD AND LEAKY PIPES
Similarly, the new Port Antonio infrastructure programme, an NWC project to improve drainage, water and sewerage infrastructure, has a built-in component to study the water losses and derive means of containing the UFW. The project is at its preliminary stages with NWC just inviting bids for the design consultants. According to president E.G. Hunter, the Commission estimates that it can improve water earnings from Portland by 30-35 per cent, but it will take a major overhaul of the system including the replacement of undersized water mains that serve the parish. The infrastructure upgrade, pending for many years, is part of a master plan developed for the area in 1996, but is now being pushed as key to the business success of the new luxury yacht marina that the Port Authority, another state agency, has expended US$24m so far to develop.
Portland gives the Commission monthly revenues of $7.5m, Hunter told Builders Forum, or $90 per annum. An improved water delivery system could take those earnings, he said, to about $10m monthly, or $120m. But if NWC's 70 per cent estimate of UFW is accurate, then the parish has the potential to generate revenues of $25m monthly or $300m/year.
In its 21-year history, NWC has only built one scheme in the parish, at Packy River, and last year the state water monopoly also replaced the mains in the seaside capital of Port Antonio. Everything else is old inherited infrastructure that came with the system when responsibility for water was transferred from the Parish Councils to the Commission in 1981, Hunter said.
To estimate UFW, the Commission must have accurate measures of the water it produces and sells, as well as the amounts used by the NWC itself for operational purposes.
But only about 40 per cent of islandwide production is measured, said the president, and while the Commission tracks consumption through its metering system, and knows how much it sells, "not all consumption is metered," he said.
In its 2001 annual report, the regulatory Office of Utilities Regulation, in its performance benchmarks for the NWC, had mandated a reduction of the UFW to 55 per cent by February 2001. But while the target remains, the timetable has been stretched to within the next two years, Builders Forum was advised.
As part of its strategies to meet the OUR target, Hunter and his team have to be looking seriously at bringing the water infrastructure up to par, as is now happening with Port Antonio.
The US$40m project - financed 40 per cent by the European Investment Bank and 60 per cent Government of Jamaica - will be looking at leak detection, pipeline repair and replacement, customer metering and meter replacements, and additional zone metres to detect general usage.
