NWC Working to Reduce Water Loss

The National Water Commission (NWC) is working to reduce water loss, primarily through its Non-Revenue Water (NRW) Reduction Co-Management Programme.

Non-revenue water is water that is produced and treated, but never billed due to leaks, theft, or metering inaccuracies

Speaking on the Office of Utilities Regulation Webinar on Jamaica’s Water Sector, held on Wednesday (September 30), Acting Vice President, Operations at the NWC, Dr. Phillipa Campbell-Francis, said the age of the company’s infrastructure has impacted NRW.

“We have been working on ensuring that our NRW figures go down. NRW is now at 70 per cent, but we have done co-management projects in Kingston and St Andrew and in Portmore where we have gotten that NRW figure significantly down to between 38 and 40 per cent,” she stated.

Dr. Campbell-Francis also informed that the NWC is in the process of going through an islandwide NRW programme.

“This programme is supposed to last for 11 years. The first year is primarily auditing, the next five years we’ll be focussing on works and then the next five years, maintenance and what we are expecting is that we will be able to move NRW down from the current 70 per cent all the way down to 30 per cent and we have already started some of those works. We’re in procurement so we expect that by 2027/28, the auditing and some initial works will commence,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr. Campbell-Francis also provided an update on several NWC projects that are currently underway.

She said the Rio Cobre water treatment plant is being undertaken at a cost of US$92 million and slated to be completed next year and will bring approximately 15 million gallons of water into the system.

“So, come next year May, even if we should have a severe shortage of water from the usual areas, we will have enough water from Rio Cobre to supply sections of St Catherine and Kingston,” Dr. Campbell-Francis said.

She also mentioned the Western Water Resilience Improvement Project, with Phase 1 budgeted around US$177 million.

“We are significantly advanced and that is changing out 65 kilometres of pipelines between Martha Brae starting at Bounty Hall, from Bounty Hall through to Negril and those are 700 mm diameter pipelines. So that is significant and that will ensure that going forward, challenges we would have had on the western side would also be handled,” she noted.

Dr. Campbell-Francis also mentioned the Greater Mandeville Water Supply Project, which she said is now far advanced and will bring an additional three million gallons of water into the system, taking water from the Pepper wells, through Gutters and Spur tree.

“All those projects are advanced and then we have smaller projects such as the Monroe Road/Wellington water and sewer projects and we have, for example, the Ferry to Rock Pond water supply projects, in addition to smaller projects that are being undertaken across all parishes,” she said.

“So, the NWC is serious about ensuring that our customers are served in this time and also to ensure that we are building resilience for the future as demonstrated in the projects that we are doing to improve reliability,” she added.