Multimillion dollar water fix - NWC to spend $1.5 billion to replace Ferry to Six Miles worn transmission pipelines
Published:Friday | December 28, 2018 | 12:00 AMPaul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
The National Water Commission (NWC) is to spend $1.5 billion to replace the existing transmission pipelines from Ferry to Six Miles in St Andrew. This follows the massive break in the line some 35 feet below the surface in a section of the Mandela Highway now under reconstruction and which has been abandoned.
The break has deprived the NWC of about five million gallons of water per day, or more than 10 per cent of the Corporate Area's daily water needs, causing the disconnection of the major source of supply to many communities.
"The new pipeline will not be constructed underground as is the case that we now have. It will be constructed adjacent to the southern carriageway of the Mandela Highway on berms," said NWC President Mark Barnett at a press conference in St Andrew yesterday.
Barnett explained that the pipes would be placed above ground so as to have total access in case of a major break like what is being experienced now.
He also noted that the NWC was in the process of identifying financing for other much-needed work on several water mains that are critical to its network.
"If we are going to improve the resiliency and reliability of service in Kingston, they must be replaced," he noted.
SECOND PIPELINE
Construction cost for these systems - running from Six Miles through Spanish Town Road up to the Marescaux Road facility - is in the region of US$70 million, NWC Vice-president for Engineering and Capital Projects Garth Jackson said.
"A second pipeline is slated to be installed along Washington Boulevard, all the way to Constant Spring Road, and a third one to increase the resilience of the transmission main from Stanton Terrace to Marescaux Road," he said.
People's National Party's Shadow Minister of Water and Climate Change Ian Hayles has asked the minister responsible for the water portfolio to immediately address the crisis, which he claims is being experienced by nearly one million residents in more than 40 communities in the Kingston Metropolitan Area as well as in St Catherine, St James, and St Mary.
In a statement yesterday, Hayles said that the crisis was entering its second week and that the minister was yet to address the issue, except for a cursory statement attributed to the NWC that the disruption was connected to the ongoing construction in the Six Miles area.