Simone A. Williams | Why Jamaica’s water laws deliver infrastructure…but not universal service

Jamaica has no shortage of water laws.

For more than a century, Parliament has passed legislation to govern water supply, protect watersheds, control floods, license abstraction, regulate utility rates, and manage wastewater.

Yet for many Jamaicans – particularly in rural and peri-urban communities – reliable access to safe water remains uneven. Intermittent supply, dependence on trucking, and small systems under stress are still part of daily life.

This is not because Jamaica lacks regulation. It is because our water laws were designed primarily to build and regulate infrastructure, not to guarantee universal service under diverse local conditions.

Understanding this distinction is essential if Jamaica is to close the remaining access gap.

A LAYERED LEGAL HISTORY

Jamaica’s water framework developed in stages, each responding to the needs of its time.

Early laws, dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, focused on parish and municipal water works, charges, and supply arrangements. These statutes reflected a localised approach to water provision, shaped by settlement patterns and limited national coordination.

By the mid-20th century, the focus shifted. Flood control legislation, national water supply laws, and the strengthening of a central utility marked a move toward state-led infrastructure development. The aim was scale, reliability, and economic growth, particularly in urban areas.

From the 1990s onward, Jamaica modernised further. Water resources licensing brought abstraction under formal control. Economic regulation introduced structured rate-setting and service oversight. Environmental regulations tightened controls on wastewater and pollution. More recently, climate policy and national development planning have placed water security firmly within a resilience and sustainability framework.

Each layer added strength. But layers do not always align.

WHERE THE FRAMEWORK WORKS WELL

It is important to acknowledge what Jamaica’s water laws do well.

The country has a clear national utility mandate for large-scale service provision. Water abstraction is licensed and regulated, reducing open-access exploitation of rivers and aquifers. Utility rates are subject to independent economic regulation, helping to balance financial viability and consumer protection. Wastewater and sludge are now governed by modern environmental standards. Climate policy increasingly recognises water as a frontline adaptation issue.

These are not minor achievements. Many countries in the region are still building this foundation.

THE STRUCTURAL GAP

The challenge emerges in the spaces between these systems.

Jamaica’s legal framework assumes, often implicitly, that water service will either be delivered by a national utility or addressed through major engineering works. But a significant share of the population relies on small rural systems, legacy parish supplies, community-managed schemes, or climate-stressed sources that do not fit neatly into the national utility model.

For these systems, the law is less clear.

• Who is responsible for ongoing operation and maintenance?

• What service level is considered acceptable where full piped supply is not immediately viable?

• How is public health protected when systems are small, intermittent, or seasonal?

• Who finances routine costs such as treatment chemicals, electricity, minor repairs, and monitoring?

Existing laws touch these questions indirectly, but they do not answer them directly.

As a result, many small systems exist in a grey zone – neither fully informal nor fully integrated into national service planning. When problems arise, responsibility can become fragmented across agencies, local authorities, communities, and emergency responses.

WHY CLIMATE CHANGE RAISES THE STAKES

Climate change makes this structural gap harder to ignore.

Droughts, intense rainfall, and source degradation tend to affect small and rural systems first. Springs dry up. Intakes are damaged by floods. Treatment becomes more difficult as water quality fluctuates. Communities turn increasingly to trucking or informal coping strategies, often at high cost.

Without a clearly defined service framework for these systems, responses remain reactive rather than planned. Climate resilience policies exist at the national level, but their translation into everyday water service decisions for small systems is uneven.

In effect, climate stress exposes a policy gap that has existed for decades.

INFRASTRUCTURE VERSUS SERVICE

At the heart of the issue is a distinction that is rarely stated explicitly: infrastructure delivery is not the same as service delivery.

Jamaica’s laws are strong on authorising infrastructure – pipelines, treatment plants, flood works, irrigation schemes – and on regulating utilities and resources. They are less explicit on how to manage water as a social service in contexts where conventional infrastructure models do not apply.

This is not unique to Jamaica. Many countries built their water laws around engineering solutions and later discovered that universal service requires additional policy tools: differentiated service standards, social financing mechanisms, clear local governance arrangements, and sustained operational support.

A TIMELY CONVERSATION

Recent public discussion around rural water and minor supplies suggests that this distinction is now gaining attention. That is welcome.

A modern water framework does not abandon national utilities or engineering expertise. Instead, it complements them by clearly defining how small systems fit into the overall service landscape – how they are supported, regulated, financed, and monitored in ways that protect public health and build climate resilience.

Such an approach does not weaken existing institutions. It strengthens them by clarifying roles and expectations.

LOOKING AHEAD

Jamaica’s water laws have delivered real progress. They have enabled infrastructure development, modern regulation, and increasingly sophisticated environmental and climate policy. The remaining challenge is ensuring that this framework delivers reliable, safe access for all Jamaicans, regardless of where they live or how their water system is configured.

That requires recognising that universal service is not achieved by infrastructure alone, but by policies that reflect the social and climatic realities of water provision.

The conversation is overdue – and it is one worth having now.

- Dr. Simone A. Williams is an international specialist in water security, climate resilience, and environmental governance. Send feedback to sawilli695@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com