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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>A tragedy waiting to happen</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Barbara Gloudon
Friday, February 09, 2007
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=80 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Barbara Gloudon</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>THE ROAD to Morant Bay from Kingston winds up and down hills, through settlements representative of the mixed fortunes of our people - from mini "castles" with arches and turrets, beloved of returned residents living out their dream kept alive in the hostile cold of Foreign Lands, to hastily assembled one-roomers of ply board and the odd concrete blocks.<P class=StoryText align=justify>There was a time when the journey could be undertaken in an hour or little more. Today, on a really bad day, the flood of traffic can hold you up for two hours or more. The motorist's nightmare (daymare) comes in the form of trucks - large pachyderms, stuffed with marl and gravel on the way into the city and beyond, menacing and dust-covered.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The trucks of the Kingston-Morant Bay-Kingston roadway represent a new reality. In the name of progress, we're choking our environment like a hangman's noose cutting off the life of its victim. The difference is that we can always "Privy Council a hanging". The trucks are another matter. It's not the vehicles in and of themselves which constitute the problem. It is their contents and the implications for their source.<P class=StoryText align=justify>St Thomas now has one of the largest "export industries" in the island. Not bananas and sugar bound for England or even ganja to the US (as many people think). This is not even an export trade requiring the ubiquitous visa to leave the island. It is the trans-shipment by road of the natural resources of one parish to others.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Sand and gravel from St Thomas riverbeds and shoreline are being dragged (hauled) across the length and breadth of Jamaica, as far west as St James, Hanover and Westmoreland, enriching the earnings of quarry operators, building contractors, truck drivers, etc while St Thomas people complain that little of the rewards reach them. They have to sit and watch it going away, day after day.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Predictably, the environment is now groaning under the weight of the daily mining and truck-out. Purveyors of the stuff will tell you they're not doing anything illegal. Quarries are licensed, so are trucks. A case could well be made out also that the sand and gravel are extraneous material shed by nature when "river come dung". Still and all, there's a sense of unease in some quarters. Moving out the sand and gravel may not be illegal, but it certainly is not comforting to St Thomas people.<P class=StoryText align=justify>An even more sobering environmental tragedy is being played out. It concerns the swift and irrevocable erosion of some coastal areas as well as the decimation of hillsides. That part of the coast road which winds up and down then flattens out by Roselle and adjacent areas is being rapidly undermined by the sea, which is no respecter of persons. Waves come in and waves go out and the land with it.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The last time that we had one of the really big rains, the road broke apart, cutting off access to Morant Bay, forcing travellers to and from to find long and cumbersome routes to go about their business. The edges of the roadway bordering the sea have been chewed up. One gets the uncomfortable feeling that the sea is also doing its worst under the edge of the road, like a cake being eaten out from underneath, with the icing above maintaining the illusion that all is well. I
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Barbara Gloudon
Friday, February 09, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=80 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Barbara Gloudon</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>THE ROAD to Morant Bay from Kingston winds up and down hills, through settlements representative of the mixed fortunes of our people - from mini "castles" with arches and turrets, beloved of returned residents living out their dream kept alive in the hostile cold of Foreign Lands, to hastily assembled one-roomers of ply board and the odd concrete blocks.<P class=StoryText align=justify>There was a time when the journey could be undertaken in an hour or little more. Today, on a really bad day, the flood of traffic can hold you up for two hours or more. The motorist's nightmare (daymare) comes in the form of trucks - large pachyderms, stuffed with marl and gravel on the way into the city and beyond, menacing and dust-covered.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The trucks of the Kingston-Morant Bay-Kingston roadway represent a new reality. In the name of progress, we're choking our environment like a hangman's noose cutting off the life of its victim. The difference is that we can always "Privy Council a hanging". The trucks are another matter. It's not the vehicles in and of themselves which constitute the problem. It is their contents and the implications for their source.<P class=StoryText align=justify>St Thomas now has one of the largest "export industries" in the island. Not bananas and sugar bound for England or even ganja to the US (as many people think). This is not even an export trade requiring the ubiquitous visa to leave the island. It is the trans-shipment by road of the natural resources of one parish to others.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Sand and gravel from St Thomas riverbeds and shoreline are being dragged (hauled) across the length and breadth of Jamaica, as far west as St James, Hanover and Westmoreland, enriching the earnings of quarry operators, building contractors, truck drivers, etc while St Thomas people complain that little of the rewards reach them. They have to sit and watch it going away, day after day.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Predictably, the environment is now groaning under the weight of the daily mining and truck-out. Purveyors of the stuff will tell you they're not doing anything illegal. Quarries are licensed, so are trucks. A case could well be made out also that the sand and gravel are extraneous material shed by nature when "river come dung". Still and all, there's a sense of unease in some quarters. Moving out the sand and gravel may not be illegal, but it certainly is not comforting to St Thomas people.<P class=StoryText align=justify>An even more sobering environmental tragedy is being played out. It concerns the swift and irrevocable erosion of some coastal areas as well as the decimation of hillsides. That part of the coast road which winds up and down then flattens out by Roselle and adjacent areas is being rapidly undermined by the sea, which is no respecter of persons. Waves come in and waves go out and the land with it.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The last time that we had one of the really big rains, the road broke apart, cutting off access to Morant Bay, forcing travellers to and from to find long and cumbersome routes to go about their business. The edges of the roadway bordering the sea have been chewed up. One gets the uncomfortable feeling that the sea is also doing its worst under the edge of the road, like a cake being eaten out from underneath, with the icing above maintaining the illusion that all is well. I