Spending $800,000 a Year on Trucked Water: A Christian School for the Deaf Gets a $2 Million Rainwater System

• The Knockpatrick, Manchester campus had faced water shortages for over two years
• It was spending up to $800,000 a year buying water
• A $2 million rainwater harvesting and supply system is being built
• The school expects to harvest over 100,000 gallons in rainy seasons

A Christian school for deaf children in Knockpatrick, Manchester, has been given a $2 million lifeline to fix a problem that had been draining its budget for more than two years: it simply did not have reliable water.

The Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf’s Knockpatrick campus serves more than 100 deaf students. According to the Jamaica Observer, the school had been buying water to stay open. “We were spending up to $800,000 a year purchasing water just to keep the school running,” said campus manager Trudy Powell. “There were days our students came to me saying, ‘Miss Trudy, there’s no water’.”

The fix is a rainwater harvesting and water supply system, paid for through a partnership between the Digicel Foundation, the RESET Project 2025 and The Rescue Package Foundation. Once in place, the system is expected to capture more than 100,000 gallons during the rainy seasons, and the school hopes to restart income-earning activities, such as summer camps, that the shortage had made impossible.

“Our goal is to create lasting change in communities that need it most,” said RESET Project 2025 chief executive Annoleah Wynter. Miguel Williams of the Digicel Foundation said: “This project is not just about water, it’s about dignity, stability, and empowerment.” The organisation behind the school was founded in 1957 and runs three residential schools as well as the Jamaica Deaf Village.

The numbers make a simple property case. At $800,000 a year, the new system could pay for itself in about two and a half years on water savings alone, before counting the revenue from reopened summer programmes. For hillside institutions in central Jamaica, catchment and storage are not extras but core infrastructure.

Homeowners, churches and investors building in Manchester, St Elizabeth or any area with patchy piped supply can take the same lesson. Guttering, tanks and pumps cost money upfront, but they cut running costs, keep a building usable and make a property far more attractive to buyers and tenants who have lived through a dry season.

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