Gov’t pushing for developers to build water tanks in new housing schemes
STATE minister in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development Homer Davis says Government plans to engage housing developers to have them construct 50,000-gallon tanks for every 100 new houses built, to help a vast majority of Jamaicans access clean, potable water by 2030.
Having access to clean, potable water falls at number six on the list of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, agreed on by 193 countries in 2015, that are crucial to ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality while also protecting the planet by 2030.
Davis took journalists on a tour yesterday of the Rural Water Supply Limited’s Artificial Underground Recharge System in Inswood, St Catherine, which supplies the National Water Commission (NWC) with five million gallons of water on a daily basis. Though that system is operational, many parts of the Corporate Area and others parts of the island, experience regular water shortage. Therefore, he said, getting housing developers and contractors to buy into the rainwater system in housing schemes would be ideal, if combined with water coming from the Inswood plant and also wells in different parts of the island, some of which are currently being rehabilitated.
“Taking into consideration what the island is now experiencing in terms of climate change, we have to do whatever can be done to secure the sustainability of water. We are able to extract millions of gallons of water from the Rio Cobre but the Rio Cobre is dependent on how regular we get rainfall and we cannot extract beyond a certain capacity.
“I can tell you that Government is looking at other areas of how we can get water and we are encouraging citizens to get the necessary storage capacity to deal with rainwater harvesting and how homeowners can include it in their construction process,” said the junior minister.
He pointed out that it should not be ignored that some areas in Jamaica have a steady supply of water for six months and then an inadequate supply for another six months.
Davis added that for the island to maintain and sustain water supply, numerous and varying methods have to be put in place. The minister said although the novel coronavirus pandemic has caused large amounts of money from the Consolidated Fund to be used up, work is still ongoing to sanitise and reactivate some wells across the island that had been taken out of commission. He said he would not be responding to questions on water shortage issues experienced by residents in Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine, because the role of the Rural Water Supply Limited is to recharge aquifers and not to distribute water to citizens as that is the role of the NWC.
According to Audley Thompson, managing director of the Rural Water Supply Limited, the underground recharge system in Inswood is the biggest of its kind in the
Caribbean and highlighted that the system can be adjusted to put out 10 million gallons per day.
“There is no other like this in Jamaica, the biggest in the Caribbean. We produce five million gallons a day but it was designed to take at least 10 million gallons. The gate is set at a certain level and the level is monitored. If we open the gate, we would get much more water coming in. As it relates to looking at systems in the rural area, the Rural Water Supply Limited is doing that.
“What we want to do, based on the 2030 vision, is to ensure that all of Jamaica has access to water. Some rural areas don’t have any piped water and rainwater is what they use, so we have basically been rehabilitating rainwater concrete catchment tanks. In some areas, the Ministry of Local Government has set up water traps. Basically, we are trying to solve all of the problems when it comes to water, to meet the 2030 vision,” Thompson said.