Jamaica Flooded, Water, Water Everywhere and soon not a drop to drink

Water, water everywhere and soon not a drop to drink! Over the past month, Jamaica has been flooded with water from what seemed like a never-ending nonstop rainstorm. Water is everywhere wreaking havoc on our fragile infrastructure. Newly build highways flooded, landslides block roads, roads landslides into rivers and valleys, houses collapse and washed away, and several people have lost their lives. The agricultural sector, which normally screams for more water is being hard hit with farms flooded and crops flooded and suffer water damaged. Jamaica moves from one extreme to the next, if its not drought, hurricane then its flood.

The National Water Commission declared that the dams were all full and overflowing considering that our dams are almost filled with silt/sludge which makes them impossible to be filled with water. In fact, I predict that in the next two months, Jamaica will be suffering drought conditions with water shortages, water lock offs, talks of trucked water and water shops, causing massive loss of agricultural produce and productivity.

Over 90% of all the water falling on Jamaica will be washed out to sea because we have done very little by way of water harvesting and storage. Our storage and harvesting capacity are way below requirements and not fit for purpose. Which it seems, is by design because our Governments have monetized water, allowing friends and family to profit from it, at the expense of the people. Human suffering is profitable because human suffering is control and control is profitable.

The amount of water that is currently falling on Jamaica is above abnormal but if we never design for below normal or even normal then how are we supposed to survive above normal? I have seen roads flood after 30 minutes of rain. It is not a matter of if, we will get bad weather but a matter of when Jamaica will experience bad weather, it is inevitable! We are a tropical island that is affected by tropical weather conditions, hurricanes, droughts, storms, tropical depression are all common occurrences but what is also common is our lack of preparations. It is safe to say that Jamaicans have a dry weather mentality and an inability to learn from what is affecting us. We fail to study cause and effect and fail to make plans to minimize effect!

A lot of the flooding that is taking place in the corporate area is self-inflicted. These flooding’s are a direct result of our building practices and our nasty habit of throwing our garbage anywhere we feel like throwing them, thus blocking gullies and drains. Jamaica’s developers of Gated Townhouse Communities, design and implements water management systems in these communities using the design principles of “Anywhere but Here”! What is happening right now on for example Dillsbury Avenue is typical of what is happening in areas heavily populated with Gated Townhouse Communities. On Dillsbury Avenue about 95% of what was once soil has been covered over with concrete and developer are using the design principle of “Anywhere but Here” to channel the water on to the street. Massive amount of water is leaving these compounds going onto roadways and these roads have never been designed to handle below normal rain fall much less above normal rainfall. On top of all that the drains and the gullies are blocked, filled and overflowing back onto the streets.

I have long concluded that most Jamaicans hate Green Space and the Environment. It seems to me that most of us think Green Space is backwards and not very metropolitan. For some reason Green Space is not seen as progressive but something to be destroyed and replace with concrete. Every piece of empty land in and around Kingston and St. Andrew is being converted into some tacky over the top Florida style townhouse complex compound with big tacky slow-moving electric gates bigger than God's own pearly Gates and no design to properly handle water runoff. This to me is a catastrophic environmental disaster because where there was once a nice house in a big lovely green yard or a nice piece of open land, full of trees, birds, various wildlife and a flourishing eco-system, now sits a tacky looking oversize hideous concrete townhouse complex that is almost invading the blasted sidewalk, squeezing every square inch out of the yard and causing an eyesore to all.

We need to start designing and implementing sustainable designs for all our extreme conditions. I know we cannot control nature, but we cannot complain if we have done nothing to at least minimize the effects of these adverse weather conditions and if we create conditions to make it worse!