Negril’s Water Crisis: A Resort Running Dry

Negril, Westmoreland

Negril offers its visitors seven miles of celebrated coastline, world-class sunsets, and, with increasing regularity, a water shortage. The resort town’s persistent struggle with water supply has become one of the most cited obstacles to sustained development, a problem rooted not in geography but in infrastructure that has not kept pace with decades of growth.

The Source of the Problem

The Logwood Treatment Plant, which serves sections of Hanover and Westmoreland including Negril, has a stated capacity of six million gallons per day. In practice, by 2024, it was producing closer to three million gallons, constrained not by the plant itself but by the volume of water reaching it. Source intakes across western Jamaica, including the Great River on the Hanover and St James boundary, have seen reduced flows, a pattern consistent with the broader pressures of climate change on Jamaica’s freshwater resources.

A civil engineer with direct experience of the system’s construction described the situation plainly: the infrastructure was built for a different era, and the natural water sources feeding it are diminishing. The result is a resort where tourists and residents routinely experience low pressure or no supply, and where hotels have long relied on trucked water or private storage as a baseline operating condition rather than a contingency.

Proposed Solutions

The technical community has begun to look beyond conventional supply augmentation. Desalination, long considered too expensive for Jamaica’s context, is now being reconsidered in light of falling costs for solar energy. A solar-powered desalination plant, producing water at an estimated cost of around US$1 per cubic metre, could in theory provide a reliable supply that is independent of rainfall and river flow. Treated wastewater reuse has also been raised as an option, with proponents noting that modern treatment processes produce water of higher quality than current potable supply standards.

Neither option is without cost or complexity. Desalination requires capital investment and ongoing operational capacity. Wastewater reuse requires public education and confidence building. Both require a planning and procurement process that has not historically moved quickly in Jamaica’s public utility sector.

What This Means for Property and Development

Water supply is not a peripheral concern for Negril’s property market. For developers proposing new hotel rooms or residential units in the resort corridor, the ability to guarantee water service is a precondition for financing, permitting, and operation. The pipeline of 5,000 new rooms announced in 2022 cannot be filled if the infrastructure cannot support it.

For existing property owners, particularly those operating short-term rentals or small hotels, chronic water insecurity adds directly to operating costs and reduces the quality of the product being offered. In a competitive Caribbean market, this is not a marginal disadvantage. Buyers considering property in Negril, whether for personal use or investment, are right to ask detailed questions about water provision at the property level, and about what systemic changes are planned at the town level.

Infrastructure and Confidence

The water issue in Negril is, in the end, a question of state capacity. The resort generates substantial tourism revenue for Jamaica. It contributes significantly to national earnings. The case for sustained public investment in its water infrastructure is not difficult to make. What has been missing is not the argument, but the execution. Until that changes, Negril’s property market will continue to carry an infrastructure risk premium that more reliably serviced destinations do not.

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