Dixon

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Intense resort development on the island's north coast could pose a serious threat to potable water supply, an environmentalist says.

A 2005 report by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica has also pointed to the slow drying up of freshwater supply due mainly to seawater intrusion in groundwater supplies. The decline in freshwater supply has been exacerbated by large-scale development in some resort areas, which require excessive amounts of water.

Some 15,000 hotel rooms are planned under the tourism-expansion project for the island and they are all to be completed by 2011. Several of them are already under way and are even near completion. They are concentrated along the north-western coast of the island.

Demand exceeds supply

Hugh Dixon, executive director of the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency, tells The Sunday Gleaner that in many of the developmental areas on the resort strip, water demand already exceeds supply. Future planned development in these areas will worsen the situation, he says.

"If we are extending our demand on the existing source by creating development, then we are going to be having an inverse relationship," Dixon explains.

Development, he says, is necessary if the economy is to grow but he cautions that it has to parallel efforts to conserve water resources and that means limiting the demand in areas where distribution is already sparse. Negril and Ocho Rios, for example, are two of the areas the Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development points to as having an inadequate supply of water.

"We can end up in a situation where we can't supply the water to these developments and eventually they become developments that can't support our economy," he argues.

No serious strain

Contrary to environmentalists, urban planner Earl Bailey is arguing that the water resources are not under any serious strain. The real problem, he says, is the inability of the National Water Commission (NWC) to distribute enough water to these areas.

"You often find that persons who can give back a good return on the investment in infrastructure like the resort areas, they are the ones that are given the supply," Bailey argues. "Small communities don't pay (enough) taxes to support proper infrastructural work for water supply," he adds.

Bailey, who is a lecturer at the University of Technology, suggests, though, that communities closer to the water heads are more likely to suffer from water shortages, because the resource is being diverted from these communities to shore up the supply required for large development projects.

Distribution problems

The NWC admits that it foresees increased distribution problems, but counters Bailey's criticism by arguing that measures being put in place will help the commission give better service to communities where water supply is inadequate.

"What we are doing is make the development that is taking place along the coast work to the benefit of the communities," corporate communications manager at the NWC, Charles Buchanan, tells The Sunday Gleaner.

Vice-president of corporate and strategic planning at the NWC, Vernon Barrett, explains that sections of the north-coast region which support more development will be given priority attention. He says this will also strengthen supply not only to hotels, but to other developments and communities.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com