Minister declares illegal dumping in waterways a national emergency

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John has de­clared the wide­spread prac­tice of dump­ing waste in wa­ter­cours­es a “na­tion­al emer­gency”, em­pha­sis­ing the crit­i­cal need for im­me­di­ate ac­tion as the rainy sea­son ap­proach­es.

Dur­ing a tour of out­fall drains in her Cou­va North con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, John told Guardian Me­dia that the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ed pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns to com­bat lit­ter­ing and its dev­as­tat­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

“Pol­lu­tion is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to flood­ing across the coun­try,” John ex­plained, cit­ing re­cent in­ci­dents in Port-of-Spain where clean-up crews dis­cov­ered large drums, wardrobes, stoves, and cloth­ing clog­ging wa­ter­ways. “In ad­di­tion to ma­jor ap­pli­ances, we have plas­tic bot­tles strewn every­where through­out our wa­ter sys­tems.”

The min­is­ter high­light­ed suc­cess­ful re­cent clean-up op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the clear­ing of the Randy Carter Bridge in her con­stituen­cy. How­ev­er, she stressed that sus­tain­able so­lu­tions re­quired be­hav­iour­al change from cit­i­zens.

“I am hop­ing that peo­ple will be civic-mind­ed and re­spon­si­ble enough not to dump waste,” John said. “This is a na­tion­al emer­gency be­cause all this de­bris ends up in our wa­ter­cours­es and even­tu­al­ly the sea, cre­at­ing wide­spread pol­lu­tion.”

John said that her min­istry was work­ing close­ly with the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) to clear wa­ter chan­nels, par­tic­u­lar­ly those run­ning through aban­doned sug­ar cane fields. These ar­eas were pre­vi­ous­ly main­tained by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed be­fore sug­ar pro­duc­tion ceased in 2003.

The Min­is­ter em­pha­sised the hu­man toll of flood­ing on com­mu­ni­ties,

She said, “When floods hit peo­ple, it’s dev­as­tat­ing. Every­thing floats away, and many res­i­dents don’t have in­sur­ance. They must find their own means to re­place es­sen­tial items like stoves, re­frig­er­a­tors, and beds.”

She said all gov­ern­ment min­istries were cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on com­pre­hen­sive flood mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies and while pri­vate con­trac­tors had of­fered as­sis­tance, no ex­ter­nal of­fers had been ac­cept­ed to date.

“The Min­istry of Works and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has been man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion ag­gres­sive­ly,” she said.

“Our proac­tive flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts have pre­vent­ed any over­whelm­ing of the sys­tem thus far.”

The min­istry has be­gun ex­pand­ing drainage in­fra­struc­ture, with sev­er­al drains along the East-West Cor­ri­dor widened from four to sev­en me­tres to im­prove wa­ter flow ca­pac­i­ty. How­ev­er, John not­ed that some prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ments had cre­at­ed ob­sta­cles to fur­ther widen­ing of cer­tain wa­ter­cours­es.

CT­TRC Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad echoed the min­is­ter’s con­cerns, stat­ing that ne­glect of key wa­ter­cours­es had re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing and sub­stan­tial loss­es for many res­i­dents through­out cen­tral Trinidad.