One River, Our Farm: Forty Years of Water Trade-offs in the Yallahs Valley

The Yallahs River once watered my family's farm in St Thomas. Its story shows how water decisions made far away land on farmers.

Dr. Peter Edwards
3 min read

My family has farmed in the Yallahs River valley in western St Thomas since 1969. The valley is known for its mangoes, and for years an irrigation canal fed by the river ran through our land. In 1986 the Yallahs pipeline began carrying water from the Yallahs and Negro rivers to the Mona Reservoir to supply Kingston, around 20 million gallons a day by design. I remember my late father's concern that the pumping would run around the clock with no plan for sharing water with the farmers downstream. Soon after it began, we saw the river and our canal drop.

Many pressures, one river

The pipeline was not the only pressure. Deforestation in the upper watershed, floods from extreme weather and heavy sand and gravel mining in the riverbed all changed the river. By 2013 it had become, in one writer's description, “little more than a haphazard trickle in a wide, boulder strewn gully,” and the canals built to supply farms had been dry for about a decade. The aggregate trucks brought their own costs: broken roads, dust and soil erosion, paid for by the people who live in the valley.

When there is no water, there is fire

On April 6, 2013, a bush fire swept up the valley during a drought. In the past we could block the canal and flood our land to slow a fire. That day there was no water. The fire burned fruit trees, bananas and plantains and nearly destroyed my family's home. A lack of water is not only lost income for farmers. In a drought it is a danger to life and property.

Sharing water fairly

Kingston needs water, and the Yallahs is part of the answer. The lesson is not that the city should go without, but that water decisions create winners and losers, and the losers are often farmers with no seat at the table. Fair water-sharing arrangements, replanting and protecting the upper watershed, regulating sand mining and investing in on-farm storage and efficient irrigation would let the river serve both. As El Niño brings drought back to St Thomas, these are not abstract questions for my family or our neighbours. “Water is life” has never been more true.

Adapted from “Empty Yallahs River Is a Fire Hazard” (letter to the editor, 2013) and “Place Cess on Construction Aggregates” (The Gleaner, January 2009).