Imani Tafari-Ama | Stench inna di city

The putrid smell of raw sewage contrasts sharply with the stunning beauty of the waterfront area of downtown Kingston. The stench is so dense that there is no escaping it. It hits you with a bang as you come around the corner just past the Rae Town fishing village. On the other side of this foul smell, as you approach the business district, the view of the ship-strewn harbour, panning to the skyscraper-studded waterfront is breathtaking.

If you have the time, you might just yield to the temptation to pause for a stroll along the promenade that was created a few years ago as part of the road rehabilitation project. Even if you are from the area, the smell pollution will still strike you as a gross aberration in the face of the scenic split-screen of natural and man-made magnificence.

Even more astounding is the fact that around the next corner on the left is the imposing Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade building. Surely, visitors and the people who work in this and the other high-rise buildings down the street, who park their cars and walk to the offices, must struggle to inhale fresh air. Yet this pollution persists as an inescapable stench, stretching its taut influence in that area.

Perhaps being in the air-conditioned safety of the buildings, with the ability to see outside but removed from its pervasive smell, compensates for the assault to the senses. Behind sealed glass walls, the stunning view might even cause temporary amnesia. The walk through the car park, on the way to air-conditioned cars, may also be a sacrifice that is easily made as one exits the teeming city centre. The millions invested in the scenic murals cannot compensate for the miasma violence.

In this era of climate change and its attendant threats, environmental protection is of primary concern for the country and the people. The maintenance of protection standards for air, water, land, and sea provides benchmarks for measuring climate responsiveness and resilience. Lack of action also articulates the degree to which policy makers and citizens alike assume responsibility for maintaining pollution-free surroundings.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

Kingston Harbour is among the seven top-tier natural harbours in the world. Under the present conditions, that designation is both a positive and a negative. On the positive side, this port accommodates some of the most important trade vessels that do business with Jamaica. On the other hand, we also need to ask, do these ships contribute to the degradation of the port? In addition to taking on supplies, do they also offload waste in the water? The Kingston Harbour is also so densely polluted that typical sea life has died due to harmful human action.

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), which manages the maintenance of the harbour, faces a humongous task pushing back against garbage disposal malpractices. Tons of waste is dumped into gullies and ends up in the harbour. Most distressing, though, is the perennial presence of raw sewage and industrial refuse, which combines to create the impenetrable foul smell along the waterfront.

NEPA reports that between March 2022 and April 2024, it prevented 2,115,006 tons of waste from entering this scenic waterway. However, NEPA admits that the original intention to allow storm water to flow into the harbour to prevent flooding on land has escalated to more harmful substances, which threaten the viability of the water resources.

Public officials from the National Water Commission (NWC), which manages water and sewage operations, estimate that it might cost $1 billion to fix the degraded sewage disposal pipes, some of which were installed over a century ago.

The compromised infrastructure results in the presence of faeces on several streets and lanes throughout the downtown grid-road network. Over the years, graffiti sprawled across walls close to the stagnant and stench-fraught pools demand that fast cars stop splashing children playing close by with the filthy water.

HEALTH THREATS

The matter of sewage, its stench, and myriad health threats also featured in the news recently. Teachers at the Greater Portmore High School staged a sit-in to protest against the stench of sewage coming from the treatment plant next to where the school is located. They claim that this problem has been ongoing for a decade. A decade? Ten years? How is it possible that a high school and a sewage treatment plant can be next door neighbours for so long?

There seems to be an anomaly in the town planning timeline. The Greater Portmore community was built in 1991, and the sewage treatment plant was commissioned in that same year. Yet the Greater Portmore High School was constructed next to the facility in 1995. Which town planning authority would have approved this contiguity? It does not take rocket science to figure out that if the facility was designed to accommodate 4.07 million imperial gallons of wastewater per day, and that amount has long been topped, it was bound to cause problems. For the plant and its neighbours.

In 2019, the NWC announced a rehabilitation initiative to address the inadequacy of the treatment plant to serve the expanding Portmore housing schemes. Since more subdivisions had been built than were initially planned, the NWC was obliged to upgrade the facilities.

At the time, they announced that some 80,000 would benefit from an expanded main pumping station, rehabilitated Eastern Ponds and Headworks, construction of a few reed beds and the installation of wind-driven aerators designed to reduce odours.

Despite the $935-million cost of these works, complaints persist about the ongoing lack of capacity and insufficiency of planning and engineering inputs. These grievances were among the issues addressed by the protesting teachers. They claimed that their proximity to the sewage plant is making students and teachers ill. The persistent foetid odour is disrupting the learning environment overall. Ricardo Ross, principal of the Greater Portmore High School, explained that due to the stench that they experience daily, staff, students, and visitors are constantly subject to discomfort.

The housing supply has clearly outstripped the demand for adequate sewage treatment. More investment is clearly needed to expand these resources both in the downtown Kingston and Portmore areas. The filth-flooded streets in some areas of Portmore also testify that there is something rotten in this wannabe new parish. In the meantime, an alternative location for the Greater Portmore High School should be urgently considered. It is unsustainable for these two institutions to remain unhappy neighbours.

Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.