Problem has been perennial over the years, with people being left to suffer

Durrant Pate/Contributor

The downtown business and shopping districts of Kingston, is currently facing a grave public health crisis as it is overrun with raw sewage.

This is causing a health scarcity among shoppers, vendors, customers and residents, who complain that the problem is not new but has been a perennial one over the years. No long-term solution has even been discussed with the interest groups spoken to by Our Today, which spent the past few days, interviewing some of those, who are most affected by filth spewing up around the market district.

We also spent the time documenting the embarrassing, yet sad situation engulfing the city centre with raw sewage lining the streets. The situation is so severe that people have taken it upon themselves to block off some of the streets, where raw sewage has been flowing. 

Streets like West, Pechon and Darling have been turned into one-way at certain sections, which have been blocked off, in a move to prevent unsuspecting pedestrians or even motorists from being splashed.

System not being able to handle current capacity

During our tour of the locale, we were told by residents that the situation has gotten worse over the years with the new developments taking place downtown adding even more stress to the over-burdened and failing sewage system, which is susceptible to constant breakdowns. This is particularly so given the ever-present over-demand for volumes of waste and wastewater for processing when the system was not built for the current level of demand.

In fact, the system was not built for its current capacity but built for a population that existed more than two generations ago. We were shown clay pipes, which are used to transport sewage across downtown Kingston under the road and told that many of these pipes were put in more than 50 years ago with some of them collapsing under the earth because they have outlasted their useful life.

The clay pipes have become crystalized and susceptible to collapsing thereby causing blockages, which results in raw sewage ascending from below to surface onto the roads and streets of the capital city. The conventional wisdom suggests that the system has gone way past its capacity and the mismanagement of successive governments of not planning adequately for the future.

While the government has built the Soapberry Treatment Plant, which cost millions of dollars to handle the waste in the corporate area, the pipes that carry the wastewater and sewage within the city have not been changed over from clay to plastic. Thereby causing this perennial problem.

Our Today spoke with some workmen from the National Water Commission (NWC) unit, which handles wastewater, who concurred with the observation regarding the clay pipes and the fact that many of them have collapsed underground causing the problem. However, they pointed to the expensive endeavour to change out these clay pipes with plastic and the instability it would cause for such a massive pipe change out at this time.

They say the NWC cannot afford to undertake such a massive capital expenditure programme at this time given budgetary constraints admitting that such an initiative has long past its due date.