Here we go again. The National Water Commission (NWC) has announced a long list of areas to be affected by scheduled restrictions brought on by drought conditions - on top of the ongoing restrictions that many always experience in this land of wood and water. I thought that Jamaica's water woes were primarily due to long periods of drought precipitated by our destruction of flora and global warming. However, the NWC's chief engineer, Franklin Williams, explained the reasons for our problems.

In some rural areas, the hilly terrain and/or inordinate distances from water supply sources provide insurmountable challenges for potable water delivery. In our urban areas, the real problem lies in our antiquated equipment. In Kingston and St Andrew, we have old iron pipes with lead joints. In Greater Mandeville, there are asbestos/cement pipes. These compounds are bound in chemical matrices and, therefore, not a threat to our health but they are old pipes and, therefore, susceptible to leaks - especially at the rubber joints. Additionally, we live in an earthquake zone and subterranean movements often cause undetectable leaks. There is also a substantive problem with encrustation (especially in the Spanish Town area), that constricts pipes by up to 66 per cent!

Big losses

We lose non-revenue water to theft (not only by some inner-city dwellers, but also by some 'uptown' customers). Our fire hydrants are also sources of big losses. Their maintenance falls under the purview of the Fire Department (that should but often doesn't report the number of gallons used to fill fire trucks). Some hydrants leak; people open them and steal water; the Fire Department's water trucks are the only ones permitted to fill up from them but other water trucks sometimes take water illegally. Even some Rapid Response water trucks use them instead of going to designated loading bays.

There's a direct link between the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) and the NWC. Jamaica uses electrical pumps to distribute water. This incurs a great deal of cost and, whenever the JPS has a power outage, the NWC has to run off thousands of gallons of water from hydrants to undo airlocks. Only the newer systems have mechanisms to avoid that problem.

Our water storage facilities have become inadequate for several reasons. Hermitage is a bona fide dam. It impounds the Morsham River. Unfortunately, it is very old and heavily silted. It is not economically feasible to de-silt it.

Poor storage capacity

The Mona reservoir (a low crest impoundment) is filled by the Hope River and the Yallahs pipeline. It's far less silted than the Hermitage dam, but its poor storage capacity can only provide two weeks of storage in case of a drought. It suffers from reduced supply from the Yallahs River when sand and/or garbage clogs the intake.

Although consistent rainfall is desirable, heavy rainfall (the type we get with some weather phenomena), do us no good because that water is irretrievable; it causes land slippage, damages the infrastructure and brings silt and garbage into the system.

And so the scheduled lock-offs will continue because of high demand (especially during peak hours); old, leaky, encrusted supply systems; storm damage to some areas; faulty equipment (pumps, relifts, valves); theft and the inability to effect repairs or collect in 'red' areas (some high-risk inner-city communities).

Successive administrations have only employed 'Band-Aid' solutions to our water shortage problems. As our country grows, the NWC continues to operate beyond its limit. We must embark on a plan to upgrade our entire potable water supply system systematically.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Feedback may be sent to garthrattray@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.