Letter of the Day | Land of wood and no water

THE EDITOR, Madam

Jamaica is the fourth largest island nation in terms of population in the Caribbean. The indigenous people, Taínos, called it Xaymaca in Arawakan; meaning the “land of wood and water” or the “land of springs”.

Well, fast-forward several centuries later, and over 40 years since the establishment of the National Water Commission (NWC), the land of wood barely has water or should I say, potable drinking water. With over 120 known rivers and hundreds of springs to draw water from, and still having not-so-reliable water supply, I believe the NWC has failed the people of Jamaica.

The country has constant growth and development in all parishes, and yet there has been little to no growth in our water storage facilities. Apart from rivers and springs, the country receives an average of 82 inches of rain annually. Now lets zoom in on what the NWC has done with all the research and info they have access to – absolutely nothing, in my opinion.

According to the NWC, a typical single-family home in Jamaica consumes between 3,000 and 5,000 gallons of treated water per month. This is much less than the thousands of gallons that goes to waste due to broken pipelines which even when reported, still takes up to two weeks to be fixed. I estimate that majority of the pipeline network in Jamaica was set up over 40 years ago and there hasn’t been much effort the replace the lines which, I am presuming, are in advanced stages of deterioration right now.

UNWARRANTED CHARGES

NWC wants to charge paying customers for water which is being wasted. This has nothing to do with the customers, but the wastage is due to their own negligence and lack of maintenance. Why are the customers being charged for a service that isn’t guaranteed?

In 40 years of existence the NWC should not still be playing a guessing game. The drought periods are basically around the same time every year, then why there have been no expansion of the capacity of the dams and reservoirs and no efforts to harvest more water in the rainy seasons? After 40 years of being in operations, the NWC hasn’t figured out a solution than resorting to lockoffs?

FRUSTRATED CITIZEN