Suzen,
I am not sure why you are surprised about searching for the UN report as I had mentioned that particular report in the 4th post in this thread.
As for the hows and whys of how the sewer and water systems work, you might want to read up on the history of water treatment as far back as the Mycenaeans in 2500BC - your own city's water treatment owes much to these brilliant ancient people.
I am pleased that you are taking the initiative to contact the people who will actually be able to answer your specific questions that concern you. Your technical questions are obviously best answered by those representing the entities already mentioned.
The NWC website dedicated much of the content on the site stating exactly how, where and why their modern water treatment plant handle all aspects of their system. It might be helpful to spend much time reading the information already on their site before emailing and asking questions whose answers are easily found on their site.
But once again to clear up any confusion, as a general overview for those who may not know, I will add some comments that may help clarify some of the comments you are making here.
It is common knowledge (and easily googable) that there has been worldwide reef changing/damage for decades - even the Great Barrier Reef which is nearly half way around the world near Australia is effected. The Negril study from 1996 that you mentioned was created using data from the late 1980's and early 90's - and that was well before most of the new construction in Negril, surrounding communities and influx of new people to which you refer occurred. It was also prior to the construction of the Negril Water Treatment Plant. The coral reef changes were already being documented at that time as the report clearly stated.
Since there are changes/damages happening to coral reefs worldwide, and the reefs in Negril were already being changed/damaged as far back as the late 1980's, it seems that you may be taking two separate events (the reef changes that are being experienced in Negril and all over the planet) and the small population growth of the Negril area, and thinking there is a direct one to one relationship, which is not the case. In fact, the existence of a water treatment system is helping to improve the water quality. The reasons for the reef changes are not as simple as you may wish to believe.
The water plant was designed with the local population growth from 1991 to 2001 in mind, which according to the NWC was 4184 to 5823. That was when the Negril area was growing at its fastest measured rate. The initial growth in tourism was also taken into account with an expected over 2 million visitors a year to Negril - which seems to have been a bit of wishful thinking. This estimate has turned out to be a number closer to the total number of overnight visitors to all of Jamaica, not just Negril. But to err on the high side is a benefit to everyone as the initial system was designed to handle that number.
According to a 2001 study created by the USAID organization from the United States (Coastal Water Quality Improvement ProjectUSAID Contract No. 532-C-00-98-00777-00), the water treatment plant was also planned for use and upgrades using estimates of the local and tourist population taken into account as far in the future as the year 2015.
As has been mentioned, there have been upgrades to the system that were completed in March and as things change in the future so will the planned upgrades.
While no water system is perfect and there are still some rural communities that are still not served by the NWC in Jamaica, for anyone to smell rotting seaweed and somehow jump to the conclusion that the water treatment and sewage systems are at fault are simply not dealing with reality. When I first had to address this situation in 1996 on Negril.com it was somewhat excusable as Google nor Yahoo existed. Just a very inferior internet search feature called "gopher". But with all the information available easily on the internet these days, there is truly no longer any excuse for such uninformed and irresponsible behavior.
