Gov't should seek ways to unlock Jamaica's private sector wealth to drive economic development beyond the confinement of equities and foreign exchange spread to finance the development of the broader economy outside of the current autonomous monetary regime. Greater participation is needed in national development by the Jamaican private sector (PSOJ) accounting for less than 23% of GDP spent on Capital formation. The Combine resources of JPS along with the PSOJ can build underground tunnels to transfer up to several hundred million gallons of water per day from the Wag River and other Rivers in Portland and St. Mary into the upper elevations of the Rio Cobre River using solar-powered pumps. Both the Rio Cobre and Wag River gorges have the potential to hold well over 80,000 MW in potential energy.
In the case of Jamaica, the process is two-fold; using solar energy to have grid-ready energy and to provide a strategic domestic water supply. Water could be dammed in the upper Spanish River and Wag River Gorges, then pumped through tunnels into the Rio Cobre gorge where gravitational forces could supply water and hydroelectric energy to more than 2/3 of the population saving the government billions of dollars in providing domestic water supply to the lower Southern Plains.
A STRATEGIC WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT PLAN
Tropical Storms and Terreantial Rainfalls pour billions of gallons of water on the island that could be captured from the annual average of 1.9 trillion gallons combine rainfall for Portland and St. Mary, in elevated reservoirs along the Northern Slopes of the Blue Mountain Range and pumped into the watershed of the Rio Cobre using solar-powered water pumps. This could provide a strategic supply of domestic water for several years to bridge periods of extended droughts as well as hydroelectric power saving the government billions in energy cost to supply water to our population centers and developing the Rio Cobre River Gorge as a Strategic Water Reserve is of National Importance to Mitigate Climate Change Impacts
WATER SECURITY IS A STRATEGIC ASSET
The contours and elevations along the Northern Slopes of the Blue Mountain Range are naturally suited for developing these high elevation reservoirs within the valleys of the six main rivers emptying out into the sea. The Rio Cobre watershed and gorge provides also a natural trough to allow tremendous gravitational force in addition to the mechanical forces of 946,000 GMP series pumps to greatly increase the flow rate above the natural seasonal flow on hydroelectric turbines to increase energy output.Once in the upper tributary of the Rio Cobre gravity force would reduce the need for pumping water into Kingston, Portmore, May Pen, and the Southern Plains up to Sav-La-Mar where new urban development should be occurring to reduce environmental pressures on the delicate ecosystems in the Mountains.
Instead of focusing on building highways, we should now focus on securing our future water supply in light of climate change. The Parish of Portland alone could supply some 500 billion gallons of fresh water annually captured in the upper Spanish River Valley to supply the Edward Seaga's Southern St. Catherine Reservoir pumped at a constant rate of some 2,100 cubic feet per second via the Rio Cobre River Gorge. To fully optimize the system a total of four hydroelectric dams could be developed along the 60 km or 37 miles from the upper reservoir to the lower dam at Caymanas Estate, generating some 380 MW using only 45 MW of solar pump storage supplemented with natural gas and wind energy.
FUTURE URBAN GROWTH CENTRES: A STRATEGIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Supported by large-scale solar energy projects powering an agriculture farming belt providing employment in agri-processing and farming.
Could be home to a population of some 400,000 retirees contributing well over US$7.00 billion directly to GDP or a total of US$31.0 billion with total employment of close to 2.4 million people. This is how Florida develops its economy through economic diversification, but most of the retirees are expected to Jamaicans as I am certain others will retiring in Jamaica's Blue Zone.
South St. Catherine Reservoir
The South St. Catherine Reservoir was first proposed by Mr. Edward Seaga a former Prime Minister of Jamaica, the following article was published in The Gleaner, July 18, 2015:
Lack of water for domestic and irrigation use is one of the most serious environmental hazards. Globally, one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation, says Abundance, written by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. But worse is to come, they say because, by 2050, the world population would have increased from 7.2 billion people to 10 billion. This could increase the problem exponentially if no substantial water resources for domestic and irrigation use are found.
Because of the present shortage, improvement of supply is likely to be more successful from technological solutions. In Jamaica, there exist many possibilities to apply technology that will yield supplies of water where none exists or more supply where only limited amounts are available.
In agriculture, for instance, sugar cane estates are generally watered by canals fed from the main source that covers fields of cane through seepage to plant roots. However, that method has been displaced technologically by overhead sprinklers attached to a long rotating boom regulated by computers. I first saw this system in operation at Appleton sugar estate in St Elizabeth where several rotating overhead booms, each covering 60 acres, were in use. This operation was very successful in using water efficiency because two-thirds of the water went directly to the roots of the cane compared to one-third from canals. More sugar for less water!
Building The Edward Seaga Reservoir Would Have Been The Right Thing To Do!
It is not too late for the JLP to revive the concept of the South St. Catherine Reservoir as envision by Mr. Seaga in the early 1980s. We may have to relocate the newly built Caymanas Estate and realign portions of the North-South Link at Mandela Highway.
Turning to human consumption, drought conditions carry even more adverse impacts when technology is sidelined. The city of Kingston and the two adjoining urban areas, Spanish Town and Portmore, are settled by nearly half the population of Jamaica. In this critical area, some new technology is now in place to treat sewage that flows into huge open ponds where it is oxidized to a more purified state which can be used for irrigation. While the oxidization ponds are evident, I am not aware of any effort to use the treated effluent for plant fertilization to reap the full benefit of the technology. In the same area where the oxidization ponds exist, two rivers flow that could be used to provide potable water: the Ferry and Duhaney rivers. Ferry is somewhat saline and would have to be treated to remove the salt content. This is not a new technology, but it is comparatively expensive and unused in Jamaica, but it is used in the The Bahamas. In the mid-1990s, an American investor who was successfully operating a desalination plant in the Bahamas came to see me. He expressed to me an interest in Ferry. I made arrangements for him to see the appropriate minister. However, when they met he was advised by the minister that he had to get approval from the prime minister first to speak to the investor. This turn-off put an end to the discussion. But the day will have to come when desalination becomes more affordable. At that time, the Ferry River could become a major source of water supply.
The Duhaney River, as far as I know, has not been put to the test of technological purification. Or is this another cost-factor problem? If so, it can be overcome by technology to reap the benefit of increased supply of potable water for Portmore, Spanish Town and Kingston, since it runs in proximity to the juncture of all three areas. In a crisis, both imagination and perseverance must be called on to make the impossible possible. I will instance here the case of the supply of water to Kingston from the Yallahs River nearly 20 miles away. Kingston was facing the threat of severe drought in the mid-1980s. This was because no major water-supply scheme had been developed in the previous decade. To face up to this situation, I called on Caribbean Engineering, a small public company that was used for specialized schemes, particularly in UDC projects.
There was no time to use the standard approach to produce full engineering plans before the implementation could begin. So I gave approval for both planning and implementation to proceed concurrently but with the implementation of the pipe-laying running one mile behind the preparation of the engineering plans. It was a most unusual approach that required the use of all short cuts possible. The result was that Kingston got its water supply in time to avoid a perilous drought.
Today, we are facing a somewhat different problem to supply an abundance of water from a large resource base. The conceptualization of the plan was done under Agro 21 in the late 1980s by Joseph Adler, a civil engineer from Israel, and Stanley Rampairhis, local professional counterpart. The plan produced a reservoir called the South St Catherine reservoir, five times bigger than Mona. It would be by far the biggest in the island.
The South St Catherine reservoir would have a capacity of approximately 32 million cubic meters and would be able to store up to 60 million cubic meters of water annually. The source of water for the reservoir would be the Rio Cobre. A large amount of water in the Rio Cobre, assessed at 176 million cubic meters in an average year, was being lost to the sea. Of the 60 million cubic meters, it was estimated that 20 million could be used for domestic water and 40 million for irrigation.
The reservoir, along with the present canal network would solve the water shortage in the St Catherine plains for the entire 12,000 acres of irrigable land and provide water for approximately 200,000 residents. It would also alleviate the drought in Kingston by supplementing the Hermitage Dam and Mona Reservoir.
The South St Catherine reservoir would be filled and emptied by gravity to supply the surrounding agricultural lands. Approximately two megawatts of hydro energy would be produced. A detailed feasibility study of more than 200 pages was done during the 1980s that would provide valuable information for a full feasibility study and engineering design.
The reservoir would take two and a half years to be constructed and would have cost approximately US$80 million, it was estimated some 30 years ago. The implementation of the reservoir would create thousands of jobs, both permanent and temporary, and would have a positive social impact in the Spanish Town, Portmore and Kingston areas.
The study was taken over by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) in the end because PCJ provided some funding. The more-than-200-page study has apparently been shelved for nearly 30 years. If not, where is the study and why has it not been implemented? The provision of additional millions of gallons of water for this critical area can be achieved through schemes like these.
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