Garth Jackson, acting president of the National Water Commission (NWC), is reporting that 44 of its 450 systems are being impacted by current drought conditions.

At a special press briefing on Wednesday (July 16) at Jamaica House, Jackson disclosed that of that number, 23 are operating below 50 per cent capacity.

“Eastern parishes have about 40 systems which are affected by the dry season, whereas the western parishes have just about three which are affected. The rest of these systems – Hanover, Westmoreland, Manchester – all are operating largely at capacity currently,” he detailed.

Jackson disclosed that the Hermitage Dam has 246 million gallons of water in storage, which is about 62 per cent of capacity, while the Mona Reservoir has 404 million gallons, equating to roughly 50 per cent of capacity.

He shared that the caution level for both raw water impoundments is 65 per cent capacity.

To this end, he said the NWC will be taking short-term as well as medium to long-term actions to improve water supply resilience to the Kingston and St. Andrew supply zone.

“For the urban centres, we’re looking at modulating the supplies and actually regulating supplies between discrete supply zones, so that we can actually maintain service to all on a daily basis; however, reducing the actual output from the facilities,” Jackson said.

Meanwhile, Jackson stated that NWC is currently reviewing design documents for the first phase of the Hermitage Dam rehabilitation project.

This will include the installation of drainage screening to protect the fault line in the area.

“We’ll be looking at the intake pipe – the tower which we draw off water from to serve at different levels. There are valves there; there’s pipelines; we need to replace all those pipelines so we can extract greater quantities of water on a more reliable basis. There’s also the walkway bridge going across the top of the spillway that we’re going to be doing,” he explained.

Additionally, dam monitoring equipment instrumentation will be installed, aimed at extending the serviceability and design life of the dam.

Jackson also shared that the NWC is assessing options to increase storage at the Hermitage Dam.

“We’re going to look at whether we should raise the spillway level or whether we will need to install or to construct additional dams either before or after the existing Hermitage Dam,” he said.