Swimming in sewage - Untreated wastewater often ends up in rivers and sea

... Faecal coliform count exceeds standard in one of four UDC sample stations

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

IT SEEMS residents of Portmore, St Catherine, will have to continue to put up with less-than-adequate sewage treatment and the attendant health risks until their system is linked to the National Water Commission's (NWC) Soapberry facility, which serves the Corporate Area.

While the technology for sewage treatment worldwide has improved significantly, coastal and environmental scientist, Professor Dale Webber, is not convinced that local authorities with responsibility for managing the sewage systems are doing the best job.

The evidence would suggest that, in some cases, local officials are unaware of, or unconcerned with, the extent and impact of this pollution.

The Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and the NWC, by their admission, are not doing enough to safeguard public health in this regard.

Faecal coliform count

In response to queries about the faecal coliform count in the water at the Hellshire Beach and elsewhere along the coastline, the UDC's Lorna Clarke made this admission:

"With specific reference to your query on the faecal coliform count, only one of four sample stations, strategically located between Fort Clarence Beach and Sand Hills, exceeded the standard during the last sampling period (ending June 2010)."

However, she failed to identify the station or say what, if any, steps have been taken to correct the situation.

Meanwhile, the NWC operates six sewage- treatment systems with about 25 pumping stations in the Portmore area.

These are based in the Greater Portmore Ponds, Bridgeport, Independence City, Hamilton Gardens, Caymanas Gardens and Twickenham Park.

However, the systems are faced with challenges requiring different types of major rehabilitation and operated with various degrees of inconsistency.

"Negotiations are currently under way for funding a project for the conversion of four of these treatment facilities into pumping stations to the new Soapberry facility, thereby relieving the present problems," NWC Corporate Com-munications Manager Charles Buchanan told The Sunday Gleaner.

However, he did not detail the problems or their likely environmental fallout.

If the 2007 state of the environment report is any guide, then the NWC has long been guilty of contributing to the ongoing pollution of Jamaica's coastline.

A document prepared by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, with input from other agencies, notes that most waste-water treatment facilities are run by the NWC.

In 2006, the NWC had 68 facilities using 10 different types of processes.

"As these plants do not all work, untreated waste water often ends up in rivers or the sea, polluting water and marine resources and ultimately damaging the coral reefs," the document said.

Sampling programme

Webber, the James S. Moss-Solomon Sr professor of environmental management, who is also director of the Centre for Marine Sciences at the University of the West Indies, will initiate a sampling programme in the Kingston Harbour and selected areas along the Hellshire coast this month, with help from colleagues and graduate students - the first sampling programme since the 1990s.

This will also be the first since the implementation of the Soapberry sewage-treatment facility.

Upon completion of this project, the team should be able to say with some degree of certainty if untreated or inadequately treated sewage is polluting the Hellshire coastline, and who is responsible.

However, Webber is not optimistic that this will translate into substantive remedial action at the policy or plant level.

In the meantime, plans to improve sewage collection and treatment in the Corporate Area and Portmore will include the decommissioning of the four waste-water sewage-treatment plants in Port-more and converting them into transfer/pumping stations.

The installation of sewer pipelines between these transfer stations and the Soapberry Sewage Treatment Plant, including a pipe bridge crossing the Rio Cobre, is also to be undertaken and standby generators installed at the new transfer stations in Portmore.