National Water Commission maps ageing mains and tech fixes amid push for coordinated utility digs

Leaders at the National Water Commission (NWC) have weighed in on industry talk about a single-excavation rule for burying vulnerable parts of the grid—such as power lines and fibre—alongside water pipes, a concept Flow Jamaica vice-president and general manager Steven Price has promoted. The state water company runs roughly 12,000 kilometres of transmission and distribution piping for more than two million accounts across the island, and says legacy networks are a growing headache.

Kevin Carr, the commission’s acting president, and Glaca Cunningham, vice-president for enterprise development and performance monitoring, described how maintenance on roads can look like a tug-of-war with motorists. Carr said the NWC is not picking fights on purpose: much of the stock is simply old enough to need wholesale renewal. Crews may be seen plugging bursts shortly after the National Works Agency repaves a strip, because older trenching methods left many lines shallow. Fresh surfacing and other street repairs then nick those mains, he explained, which sends teams back to dig again and stirs public irritation.

There is no simple field test to know the true condition of a line that may have been in the ground for thirty to fifty years, he added. Instead, the NWC leans on logs of repeat failures; when leaks cluster past internal benchmarks for a given span, that signals replacement.

Even with that pressure on brittle pipework, a slate of large capital works is opening fresh corridors that could ease logistics and reliability. The NWC said it is pushing major schemes to firm up supply, cut outages, and widen access, citing the Rio Cobre treatment works, the Western Water Resilience Programme, the Ferry to Rock Pond water-supply upgrade, the Wellington Monroe Road scheme, and the Greater Manchester water-supply upgrade as examples aimed at steadier flows for homes, businesses, and national development.

Herman Fagan, acting vice-president of operations, said every reported leak is plotted on a map. That geospatial picture guides which segments get priority for renewal. Remote systems can start or stop some assets and watch line pressures in real time, he said, so operators can trim or reroute load if gauges spike—on Constant Spring Road, for instance—before a blowout occurs. Motorists may notice blue roadside pods that resemble hydrants; Fagan clarified they are sensors feeding network data, a programme being rolled out more widely.

The utility is also flying drones to survey routes that staff struggle to walk in steep terrain, speeding post-disaster checks even when the trigger is not a hurricane. Formal drone training has begun for line teams, with wider regional use planned. The commission reaffirmed pledges to lift service for current customers and to reach people who still lack a piped connection.