Water woes mount in Bartons, Bamboo Ridge

Despite past efforts by the Government to supply 2.4 kilometres of galvanised pipes and the renovation of steel tanks to improve the Bartons water supply in St Catherine, residents are suffering from an economic fallout due to a prolonged water crisis.

In a community where most residents rely on small poultry and livestock farming as their economic mainstay, especially since the pandemic, most are forced to quit their small businesses because of the crisis.

In addition, purchasing potable water for domestic usage at exorbitant costs is also posing severe economic challenges for these residents, even those in adjoining communities such as Red Ground, Eight Miles, and Planters.

In Bartons and Bamboo Ridge, where the crisis is more severe, residents say for the past eight months they have not seen water flowing in their pipes. Prior to that, when they got a little water, it was for about an hour on specific days.

Huge black water tanks seen in yards, and a number of smaller plastic containers positioned at gateways to collect water purchased from water merchants, gave a clear indication of the severity of the crisis.

“We are suffering, we don’t have water in our pipes for a long time. We don’t have factories and other businesses in the area to give us employment, so we raise our little chicken, pigs, goats and cows to survive, and without the water we can’t even do this,” said Gloria Halstead-Lloyd, a resident of Bartons.

“We have to buy water for $2,500 a trip, that mean we get like four small plastic drums, and we really don’t have it. If school was going on, the children couldn’t go to school because there is no water in Bartons,” she revealed.

Forty-eight-year-old Amelia Francis, who lives in neighbouring Bamboo Ridge, said the crisis is having a devastating effect on her in many ways.

“I can’t afford to raise my chickens and other animals due to the crisis. I have to buy water to maintain them and it’s costing me too much,” Francis said, while showing an empty plastic container she placed at her gate to purchase water from suppliers.

“I have to pay $4,000 to fill my 600-gallon black tank and $500 to fill the smaller plastic drums, and this only keep us for two weeks because I have to wash, cook, use the toilet and bathe. Water cost my house more than $8,000 per month,” Francis, who has two children along with her husband living in the household, added.

Jossert Wynter, a Bartons resident who recently gave birth, said it’s very difficult for her not having piped water.

“In my situation I need water on a regular basis, right now it’s costing me too much to buy water,” she said.

“We have the system in place,” said Indie Miller, of Bamboo Ridge, who is also faced with similar economic displacements as a result of the crisis. “But when the drought is on, we are not getting the water supplied to us as we should. If we could get it even two hours per week it would be good. We have to wash, cook and raise our chickens and do other farming.”

According to Miller, a system could be worked out by the National Water Commission (NWC) whereby they connect the affected areas to the Bannister and Old Harbour systems.

But the NWC field operations manager for St Catherine, Calvert Davis, said Miller’s suggestion is just not logistically practical at this time since Banister and Old Harbour are fed from different water sources.

“The problem these residents are experiencing has to do with the source. Their water source is the recently upgraded Goldmine and Coco Ridge systems that has been disrupted by the persistent drought,” Davis told The Gleaner.

He said a section of Bartons that has been severely affected is also due to stolen pipes that the NWC has recently replaced and is in the process of sanitising.

According to Davis, NWC trucks occasionally put water in the large catchment tank in Bamboo Ridge, which is then gravity-fed to the community.

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