In the aftermath of protracted water lock-offs during the Christmas holidays, which left hoteliers and residents in Negril’s West End scurrying to purchase trucked water, Councillor of the Negril Division, Bertel Moore, says the National Water Commission (NWC) has a lot to answer for.
Moore who is also Mayor of Savanna-la-Mar and Chairman of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation, has described the situation, which sent AirBnB operators and other businesses on the West End in a tizzy, forcing them to fork out loads of cash to obtain potable water, as “ridiculous”.
Moore told Negril Times that in addition to West End, a slew of communities have been affected, among them neighbouring Orange Hill, Brighton, Whitehall, as well as Good Hope and Mount Airy, but that the NWC is yet to respond, despite his best efforts.
“What they were telling us first, is that they are having electrical problems in Logwood. Well, the water came back, maybe Sunday and we had water till last night, but it’s gone again since last night,” Moore revealed.
“This morning when I work up there was no water. I tried to get NWC, but I get no answer from them. Right now, I am in office and I am trying to get them. I called Mr Jeffery Smith who is the area manager, and it just goes to voicemail when I call… So I am looking at trying to call Mr McFarlane now, to see if he can help me, to tell me what is the situation. Because the West End is out of water, up in the hills in Mount Airy, Good Hope, the whole area is out of water,” Moore told Negril Times on Tuesday afternoon.
According to Moore, who is also a resident of West End, he has been warning NWC officials for years now that with the influx of new hotels and residential areas, there was an urgent need to connect the resort town to the Roaring River water supply in Westmoreland.
At present, Negril is supplied totally by the Logwood Water Treatment Plant in Hanover, which gets its water source from the Fish River and Blue Hole springs in that community.
“For years I have been saying to Water Commission, we have to do better with the system because we are having new hotels coming on stream, new residences coming onstream, and we are not improving the water system for the area,” Moore explained.
“And the decision years ago, was to connect Roaring River into the Logwood supply so that we would have better water in the system in the Negril area,” he said.
The Mayor said that weeks before the start of the Winter Tourist Season, despite his misgivings, he had been assured by NWC representatives that everything in relation to adequate water supply in the resort town was copasetic and would remain that way throughout the period.
“In September, October, I asked one of the officers who came to our meeting ‘what is going on,’ because I have been telling them we are going to have serious problems because Logwood is having problems every now and then, as far as I am concerned,” he explained.
“I have been down on them. About October I said to one officer who came to meeting: ‘how do we stay with the Christmas season coming up and the tourist season coming up?’ And he said: ‘everything is good’. I said ‘what is Water Commission doing concerning the connection from Roaring River? He said: ‘oh that is onstream’. I said: ‘when is it gonna happen?’ He said ‘very, very soon’. I asked him ‘what time frame is very soon?’ He said to me ‘another three years’. That’s doesn’t make sense to me,” Moore affirmed.
According to the Negril councillor, the matter of the water supply ought to be addressed with a sense of urgency by the NWC.
“I can tell you for sure that Dr McNeill (former Member of Parliament) and myself, we had meetings with them; we went to Bullstrode; we have had all kinds of discussions because we knew definitely that this was going to start to happen and they need to do something about it,” Moore said.
“I have been warning them for years that the only alternative as far as I see, is to connect to Roaring River. And once we do that we would l not face this type of problem we are having. That is the only thing that will solve the problem; that is how I look at it,” he added.
When Negril Times contacted the NWC’s Water Production Engineer, for Westmoreland, Mr Robinson, he referred the publication to the Commission’s Corporate Communications offices. However, multiple calls to the numbers of the NWC’s Corporate offices in Kingston and the organisation’s administrative offices, went unanswered up to press time.
Moore’s sentiments about connecting Negril to the Roaring River Water Supply System, echoes that of hotelier and former Negril Chamber of Commerce President Daniel Grizzle.
In August 2022, whilst welcoming the commissioning of a $475-million Whitehall water pumping station in Negril, Grizzle had called for the fast-tracking of proposed expansion of the Roaring River water supply to Negril, which at the time he said was a matter of urgency, as the water at the pumping station was being provided by the under-pressure Logwood Treatment Plant in Hanover.
“Logwood is at its limit. The demand is growing and I don’t think that we can wait until the pipes are empty before we start to do something. We have to take it seriously now… Negril is growing daily, and that is good. Not only is it growing from the question of accommodation for tourists but every time you create room for the tourist, you need to have at least two rooms for workers,” Grizzle had said.
