Samuda: Gov’t to provide drought ‘safety net’ for hotels in western Ja

As stakeholders in the tourism sector, especially those in Negril, continue to worry if they will soon have a return of adequate water supply in time for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday in May, Matthew Samuda has reassured that plans are being put in place to mitigate this.

Samuda, the minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, gave an update on the issue during a press conference at the ministry’s offices in New Kingston on Earth Day, globally celebrated on Monday.

“That is a secondary peak period for hotel stays, which you know you do go through the lull post winter season... There is a safety net that will be put in place to ensure that hotels from western St James, all the way into western Westmoreland at the tip of the west end, will be protected and their business will not be disrupted,” Samuda said.

Negril, one of the popular tourist destinations in the western end of the island among tourists, mainly because of its miles of sandy beaches on shallow bays with calm and turquoise waters, is experiencing a severe drought.

That area has been among the most severely affected by drought conditions in recent months.

“The capital projects or how we ensure that in a few years we don’t have this discussion, [given that] every year you have a drought, there is a US$209 million capital plan for the north coast that will take several years, but I want to assure residents that two elements of that plan are already down the wicket in particular phases in the project’s development phase,” Samuda announced.

FIRST PHASE

He said the first is the replacement of pipelines from Martha Brae in Trelawny into St James, as well as the line from Rusea’s into Negril and for the interlinkages with all the rivers.

“We expect this pipeline replacement work to start this calendar year. We will invest some US$70 million in these pipelines, to replace these. That will deal with two issues that we currently have. One, the fact that these pipelines leak profusely. They’ve all aged out. As the prime minister would say, ‘They’ve passed their useful life’. The other issue is that the line from Rusea’s into Negril it is simply too small for the development and the growth that we’re seeing in this area,” Samuda said.

“The Government of Jamaica is concerned about the significant and extended impact of the current drought on citizens in western Jamaica. It is why over the past few weeks we have addressed this issue extensively, but… the drought has not yet abated, and we are very clear that the impact has not yet been reduced,” he said.

He says they are taking an important approach of communicating with a fair degree of regularity with citizens, specifically in Hanover and Westmoreland.

Samuda said the Government has made itself transparent in this matter and made itself available for stakeholders with a fair degree of regularity.

He also said emergency trucking is also being done through the National Water Commission, members of parliament (MP), and parish councils. Each MP in Hanover and Westmoreland, he outlined, has $4 million at their disposal to deal with the trucking of water.

Sums of $7.5 million and $5 million, respectively, have also been made available to the municipal corporations of Hanover and Westmoreland.

At the end of February, $30 million was also made available to the National Water Commission to facilitate trucking in western Jamaica, and the Brown’s Town area which was also experiencing challenges.

“The Government has invested in easing the pressure on citizens. The Government, through the Ministry of Health and NWC, continues to monitor water quality standards to ensure that these emergency interventions also do not compromise public health,” Samuda said.

“There are major infrastructure works which are required for this area, but I understand when citizens, when business people [say that] they want access to water now,” he said.

RAINFALL BELOW NORMAL

Evan Thompson, director of the Meteorological Services Branch, updated on drought conditions and stated that at the end of February all 13 parishes were receiving below normal rainfall, and a number of parishes were already experiencing drought conditions.

“All the way back to October 2023, where we had the amounts of rainfall, (we had) just about 80 per cent of normal rainfall. As we went into November and December, we saw some kind of reprieve [but] October is usually the month where we look for the greatest amount of rainfall, because that is our primary rainfall season. But as we went through to November and December, we saw that things improved somewhat,” Thompson said.

“But then there was a significant drop in January, and there we saw where rainfall amounts were just maybe less than 50 per cent of what is normal for the island. Then going into February, we saw just over 50 per cent, but still below (the) 60 per cent of normal rainfall, and March was seeing something very much close to that. We are still tallying the figures for March, but it is very close to what we experienced in February, very little rainfall detected across the island,” he said.

He said the drought experienced in 2022 to 2023 was a significant in Jamaica’s history, and it was not until April, May and going into June before things got better.

Kevin Kerr, acting president of the National Water Commission, said the capital requirements to solve the issues associated with water in Negril will be approximately US$2 million for the short term, US$186 million for the medium term and US$108 million in the long term.

He said the short-term measures can be implemented between April and July 2024. That would include a rapid appraisal of the network with active leak detection, quick leak repairs and tank rehabilitation, regularisation of consumers to encourage conservation, commence procurement of eight new water trucks; decalcification (pigging) of the Great River Raw Water Intake Pipeline and water transfer from Great River to Green Island.

The medium-term measures would be implemented between January 2025 and December 2027, which includes upgrading the transmission main between Martha Brae and Montego Bay and Lucea to Green Island and Negril, expanding capacity of the Martha Brae and Great River Water Treatment Plant and further exploring desalination.

The long-term measures would be implemented between January 2027 and December 2030 and these include constructing a new 10 mgd (million gallons per day) treatment plant at Roaring River and transmission main to Negril, and implementing the Non-Revenue Water Co-Management Project.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com