Government taking steps to restore Kings House water wells

Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter



KINGSTON, Jamaica:

Two water wells located at Kings House and Devon House are currently being tested for water quality with a view to having them brought back into use.



Robert Pickersgill, Jamaica's water minister, said the National Water Commission (NWC) is currently undertaking denitrification activities of wells in the Corporate Area in order to boost water supply.



The minister said that the decision to start with the Devon House and King's House wells is due to the fact that the Water Resources Authority already has data on the quality of water in those wells.



More than a dozen wells are across the corporate area but Pickersgill said many of them are contaminated.



He told parliament that there is a well at Ballater Avenue which uses a denitrification plant.



He said that the NWC currently takes water from that well.



Pickersgill, who was responding to questions from Dr Horace Chang, the opposition spokesman on water, said wells located at Caymanas in St Catherine have been contaminated by salt water intrusion into the limestone aquifer in the Caymanas area.



He said that it will be necessary to redesign the well field to reduce interference between wells and to rehabilitate and replace the wells.



He said preliminary investigations and estimations suggest that it will be costly to produce potable water from these wells.



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