On Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 a second public meeting was held for the construction of a cruise ship pier in the historic town of Falmouth on Jamaica's north coast. The meeting was necessary because the plan presented to the public in 2008 had changed substantially from a “finger” pier to a solid quay. In addition, the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) had required a hydrodynamic study to ensure the currents in the inner Falmouth harbour (Oyster Bay) were understood, in order to assess the impacts of the quay construction on the Luminous Lagoon.
The organisms that cause the phenomenon of luminescence are called dinoflagellates (Pyrodinium bahamense). They are common, tiny animals the size of a pinhead. These are little critters that shine. The conditions that lead them to clump together and to persist over time, however, are extremely uncommon. The Luminous Lagoon near Falmouth is one of only FOUR such places in the entire world.
Essentially, the mechanisms that cause the persistently high concentrations of dinoflagellates at Oyster Bay are unique to this particular location. They are: (1) the position of the Martha Brae River causing a certain pattern of currents in the bay, a stratification of brackish and sea water and a concentration of nutrients favourable to these organisms; (2) the presence of sea breezes, starting at mid morning; (3) the absence of wind at night.
What happens is this: At night, the water column becomes stratified into brackish and salty water. At dawn, the dinoflagellates congregate upwards towards the light into the least dense salty layer, but not into the topmost layer. The morning trade winds then move this top layer of fresh/brackish water in a westerly direction. The sub-surface, uppermost layer of saline water, full of the dinoflagellates, is moved in an easterly direction towards the eastern shallows of the bay where the dinoflagellates find conditions to their liking –salty and warm. In short: it's complicated.
The question thus became: what will happen to these local conditions during and after the construction of the enormous solid cruise ship quay?
Smith Warner International carried out a hydrodynamic study to assess the currents in Oyster Bay, using a computer model. They tested the predictive power of their model by using a combination of a current meter as well as drogues (floating items). Current measurements were collected over only 45 days, using the meter. Two drogues were used to track currents over two days in May. This limited period of data collection will not capture any kind of seasonal variation – Smith Warner’s study had to meet a deadline that was apparently too short. Further, the data were averaged over the entire water column, and did not incorporate any of the stratification described above. As a result, the modeling done is extremely limited in its ability to predict how the proposed Falmouth Cruise Ship Quay will affect the Luminous Lagoon and its concentration of dinoflagellates.
This notwithstanding, it was clear at the July 29th public meeting that a decision has been taken to go ahead with this project, regardless of its potential impact on the heritage or natural resources of Falmouth and its environs. It was clear in the exuberance of the meeting Chairman, who, despite NEPA’s requirements for neutral chairmanship, was obviously in favour of the project. It was clear in the slick presentation on the new quay which did not mention the written reservations of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust – who did not see fit to attend the meeting themselves, to let the public hear of these reservations. It was clear in the speed with which the hydrodynamic study had been conducted, and in the references to work starting “shortly.” It was clear when NEPA reduced the requirements for notice of a public meeting from 21 to 10 days, and reduced the public comment period from 30 days to 14. It has been clear for several weeks in the advertisements in local newspapers for concessionaires. And it is crystal clear that new permits will be granted and this project will go ahead, as equipment has already started arriving at the port area.
Not even questions about the economics of the project were welcome at the public meeting. The Chairman of the Port Authority, Noel Hylton, initially responded to a request from a member of the public (that would be me) as to the financing with a brusque: “Submit your question to the Minister of Finance.” In response to murmurings from the crowd and encouragement from those around him, he did then take the microphone and say that yes, this is a loan of US$121 million at 4% over ten or eleven years, and yes, it will have to be paid back by already struggling taxpayers. There was no detailed information given on the economic benefits to the people of Falmouth or Jamaicans in general, beyond a mention of the amount of visitors that will result from these ships and a vague promise of jobs. Mr. Hylton’s reluctance to take the microphone suggested he felt no need to involve the public in these decisions.
And so it is that in all likelihood, the light of the little critters that shine will be dimmed, even extinguished entirely from that special place. It is also likely that this murky experiment with Jamaica's natural resources - I have not here described the cutting of the coral reef to accommodate the giant ships, or the dredging - will bring very small economic benefits to the people of Falmouth by way of short term, low paying jobs. It is very likely that an authentic place of history will be part Disneyfied, wholly faked, and this old town constructed on a crime against humanity - for Falmouth's wealth and status was built on the enslavement of Africans - will welcome cruise ship passengers with rum punches and mento dancers. And the little critters that shine will become part of history, perhaps part of a report headed "lessons learned," a story told by old people, perhaps eventually assuming the realms of myth.
So to anyone reading this living in Jamaica, my advice is this: go and see the Luminous Lagoon. And do it very soon...
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Losing our Treasures III - Pellew Island
I dreamed all night about the island, the Little Island, we called it when I was a child. It had many names. My parents called it Monkey Island, although there is another Monkey Island in Portland. Its real name is Pellew Island, a corruption of Peleau, named for a shadowy French hermit, who reportedly lived there, on coconuts and seafood, until he was drowned in a storm surge.
Pellew Island was given a title in 1953 – part of the land titling of Goblin Hill and San San Bay. The original plan was that there would be gracious houses on the land, each with a title to a small coastal plot, where the owners could have boathouses or cabanas. Decades of official disregard for the intentions of these titles have allowed cabanas to become mansions more or less sitting in the sea.
The Portland coastline is one of the most gorgeous in Jamaica, edged as it is by the soaring Blue Mountains. And the San San coast is nothing short of stunning, curving from Alligator Head to Whale Head and Blue Lagoon, with the jewel of Pellew Island set just offshore.
The early advocates for tourism saw this beauty and immortalized it in a 1960s Jamaica Tourist Board poster, the caption of which said: “In a world of bad air, poisoned water and litter, there are still a few virginal places. Enjoy. Quickly.” Serious t’ing.
Generations of Jamaicans – not just Portlanders – have stopped at the side of the road and looked out at the island, generations of Jamaicans have swum or rowed or rafted to the island, over the shallow seagrass beds to lie on the tiny beach, or to climb to the top and look over the miracle of the reef, and listen to the surf, rolling over and over and over.
Pellew Island is a jewel, and like a jewel, it has been privately owned - mostly by women - since the 1950s. It was bought by Baron Heinrich Thyssen in 1953 for 60 pounds Sterling, as a valentine’s gift for his fiancée, Nina Dyer of New York. The marriage didn’t last, and they divorced two years later. Nina then married Prince Saddrudin Aga Khan. I remember the island when it was owned by the Princess Aga Khan – Princess Island, was another of its names – she built a bamboo raft to one side of the little beach and scandalized everyone by sunbathing nude there. Even when owned by a Princess, though, the island was undefiled by concrete and there were no gates or security guards to keep people off. The Princess committed suicide in 1965, and in 1983, Betty Estuvez, a close companion of the Princess, bought the island for US$7,000. In 1995, the island was sold again to its current owners.
Now Pellew Island is to be “developed.” The owners seek to construct two villas – one seven bedroom and one four bedroom – on this steep, fissured, forested, fragment of limestone in the Caribbean sea. There will be decks and plunge pools and a bathroom for every bedroom, and electricity and water will have to be taken to the island via underwater conduit, and somehow a barge like boat will take the construction materials across without any damage to seagrass beds or corals, although the draught of the boat exceeds the depth of the water close to the island. The island is said to be “lightly vegetated” and virtually no trees will be touched, no land clearing will be done in the rain, there is little diversity of flora and few birds, although those who are fortunate to gaze out on the island every evening report many flocks of birds. A plateau at the summit of the island will be used – but there is no plateau worthy of the term, just a small, flattish area in a grove of bamboo. Promises, promises, I thought as I sat in the public meeting, hearing all this.
But the island is privately owned, and as we understand it, the private ownership of land conveys the right to do anything at all to that land. The Government of Jamaica could, of course, acquire the island for the public, deem it part of a scenic coastline, and keep it in its natural state for all of us. The GOJ purchases land all the time when what is needed is a road or a bauxite mine. But for a natural asset – I doubt the GOJ has ever done it.
So here’s what I’m thinking. The Tainos "owned" Jamaica until the men in Columbus’s ships took it and killed off the Tainos. And then the British captured Jamaica. There’s been a fair amount of taking and capturing, and I figure I have as much right to do some capturing as anyone. So I’m gonna invade Pellew Island with my flag of Taino symbols and I’m gonna declare it mine – mine; and the world’s. Ours. Ours to see and love and visit and snorkel the waters around and lie on the beach and sit in that grove of bamboo and hear the wind in the trees and the surf on the reef and the solider crabs rustling in the dead leaves. Ours.
I know my invasion will be symbolic rather than real; but it will be my statement that some things belong not to a single person, no matter how monied, but to humankind. Pellew Island is one such thing, and so, while we’re on the subject of Portland, is Blue Lagoon. Anyone who wants to join my invasion can e-mail me at dmccaulay@cwjamaica.com And I will accept all suggestions for other precious places, whether private or public, in dire need of similar invasions.
Pellew Island was given a title in 1953 – part of the land titling of Goblin Hill and San San Bay. The original plan was that there would be gracious houses on the land, each with a title to a small coastal plot, where the owners could have boathouses or cabanas. Decades of official disregard for the intentions of these titles have allowed cabanas to become mansions more or less sitting in the sea.
The Portland coastline is one of the most gorgeous in Jamaica, edged as it is by the soaring Blue Mountains. And the San San coast is nothing short of stunning, curving from Alligator Head to Whale Head and Blue Lagoon, with the jewel of Pellew Island set just offshore.
The early advocates for tourism saw this beauty and immortalized it in a 1960s Jamaica Tourist Board poster, the caption of which said: “In a world of bad air, poisoned water and litter, there are still a few virginal places. Enjoy. Quickly.” Serious t’ing.
Generations of Jamaicans – not just Portlanders – have stopped at the side of the road and looked out at the island, generations of Jamaicans have swum or rowed or rafted to the island, over the shallow seagrass beds to lie on the tiny beach, or to climb to the top and look over the miracle of the reef, and listen to the surf, rolling over and over and over.
Pellew Island is a jewel, and like a jewel, it has been privately owned - mostly by women - since the 1950s. It was bought by Baron Heinrich Thyssen in 1953 for 60 pounds Sterling, as a valentine’s gift for his fiancée, Nina Dyer of New York. The marriage didn’t last, and they divorced two years later. Nina then married Prince Saddrudin Aga Khan. I remember the island when it was owned by the Princess Aga Khan – Princess Island, was another of its names – she built a bamboo raft to one side of the little beach and scandalized everyone by sunbathing nude there. Even when owned by a Princess, though, the island was undefiled by concrete and there were no gates or security guards to keep people off. The Princess committed suicide in 1965, and in 1983, Betty Estuvez, a close companion of the Princess, bought the island for US$7,000. In 1995, the island was sold again to its current owners.
Now Pellew Island is to be “developed.” The owners seek to construct two villas – one seven bedroom and one four bedroom – on this steep, fissured, forested, fragment of limestone in the Caribbean sea. There will be decks and plunge pools and a bathroom for every bedroom, and electricity and water will have to be taken to the island via underwater conduit, and somehow a barge like boat will take the construction materials across without any damage to seagrass beds or corals, although the draught of the boat exceeds the depth of the water close to the island. The island is said to be “lightly vegetated” and virtually no trees will be touched, no land clearing will be done in the rain, there is little diversity of flora and few birds, although those who are fortunate to gaze out on the island every evening report many flocks of birds. A plateau at the summit of the island will be used – but there is no plateau worthy of the term, just a small, flattish area in a grove of bamboo. Promises, promises, I thought as I sat in the public meeting, hearing all this.
But the island is privately owned, and as we understand it, the private ownership of land conveys the right to do anything at all to that land. The Government of Jamaica could, of course, acquire the island for the public, deem it part of a scenic coastline, and keep it in its natural state for all of us. The GOJ purchases land all the time when what is needed is a road or a bauxite mine. But for a natural asset – I doubt the GOJ has ever done it.
So here’s what I’m thinking. The Tainos "owned" Jamaica until the men in Columbus’s ships took it and killed off the Tainos. And then the British captured Jamaica. There’s been a fair amount of taking and capturing, and I figure I have as much right to do some capturing as anyone. So I’m gonna invade Pellew Island with my flag of Taino symbols and I’m gonna declare it mine – mine; and the world’s. Ours. Ours to see and love and visit and snorkel the waters around and lie on the beach and sit in that grove of bamboo and hear the wind in the trees and the surf on the reef and the solider crabs rustling in the dead leaves. Ours.
I know my invasion will be symbolic rather than real; but it will be my statement that some things belong not to a single person, no matter how monied, but to humankind. Pellew Island is one such thing, and so, while we’re on the subject of Portland, is Blue Lagoon. Anyone who wants to join my invasion can e-mail me at dmccaulay@cwjamaica.com And I will accept all suggestions for other precious places, whether private or public, in dire need of similar invasions.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Green Blues
Any Monday morning, 4.00 a.m.
OK, I give up. I’m not snoozing and will not soon go back to sleep. I’m officially awake. Brain churning. That **** public meeting. That **** chairman of the public meeting. Those **** farmers/vendors/fishers – why do they believe the rubbish they have been told for generations, if not centuries, when the lies are evident?? Why don’t they believe ME? And what the **** is wrong with regulatory authority? Why don’t they ever SAY anything at a public meeting? Wonder what the cash flow at the office is like. Did we pay the motor vehicle insurance? Think that was donated. But not the health insurance. That must be due now. Wonder if anyone is pregnant and not telling me. Love my young, all female staff, but there are…issues.
5.30 a.m. Get out of bed, groggy, sweaty, due to energy conservation commitment to not use air conditioning. Couldn’t sleep? Husband asks. He is up early, due to long daily commute in giant vehicle, therefore eliminating all hope of family attaining carbon neutrality. Let us not even discuss my overseas travel schedule. Husband hands me a cup of Jamaican coffee. I sip the deforestation of the Blue Mountains. Being an environmentalist, I reflect, means being comfortable with cognitive dissonance.
6.00 a.m. Am seated at my venerable computer. I have three computer devices – (1) the wood burning computer at home. (2) A donor funded laptop at work. (3) A Blackberry that my tech savvy sister gave me. I can never remember where anything is. E-mail count this morning – 16. 12 are work related. I start to reply.
7.00 a.m. The landline rings. It’s a radio station. Can I do an interview on global warming and the hurricane season at 7.20 a.m.? I say OK, abandon the e-mails and Google the latest research on global warming. I’ve got an 8.00 a.m. meeting with a consultant who wants to find out the definitive answer to corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt while he gets paid and I don’t. That means I’ve got to get dressed while doing the radio interview. Don’t want to print out the Google research on global warming, because of the toll on trees somewhere. Try to memorize a figure or two in order to sound totally up to date.
7.20 a.m. Phone rings while I am in the shower. Radio interview is not about global warming but about an illegal development I’ve been making a fuss about. Other person being interviewed is the irate contractor whose bulldozers have been stopped by my anti development meddling. All like you, he bawls to the radio listening public, all like you waan sen us back to di day of bullfrog and peenie wallie. That’ll have to be the last word, I’m afraid, says the radio talk show host. I take a mop to the bathroom floor.
8.05 a.m. At work. Internet is down. This is a several times a day occurrence, for which Internet Service Provider blames person who installed the Local Area Network who blames Internet Service Provider or possibly the computers themselves. Tech savvy sister’s advice has been this: Every computer has a duppy (a ghost, for any non Jamaicans). Some days the duppy wins and some days you win. For this she went to college for four years??
Consultant calls to say he will be late. Weekend e-mail count on laptop – 19. Only two are SPAM from people telling me I have won the lottery.
8.30 a.m. Consultant arrives, straight from DC, apparently. He’s already sweltering. Office has no air conditioning. I invite him to take off his jacket and he does. I give him my stump speech about corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt and he writes furiously. I will never see his report and corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt will continue apace.
10.00 a.m. Staff member advises office environment intolerable due to rat infestation. Are the cats not working? I say. We have a flock? pride? fleet? herd? of cats at the office – well, they just appeared, along with a rooster – we didn’t organize them or anything. Staff member shrugs and mentions leptospirosis. Call pest control then, I say. Start Googling impacts of rat poison on soil and ground water, but Internet still down. Muse on likelihood of raising money to pay pest control bill. Conclude nil.
10.10 a.m. Continue with e-mails, all piling up in outbox. Note am being berated by other environmental people for insufficient consultation. Feel aggrieved.
10.20 a.m. Phone rings. It’s a woman unable to breathe due to neighbour’s constant burning. She waxes eloquent about deficiencies of environmental regulators and health ministry. Phone beeps – call waiting is destroying my sanity, I think. I ask the breathless woman to hold and pick up the beep. Is that the Hotel Four Seasons? A man says. No, I say. You don’t have any rooms? The man says. No, I say, this is the Jamaica Environment Trust. But see yah now, says the man, rhetorically.
Return apologetically to the woman with the pyromaniac neighbour. She wants to know what I can do for her. We can help you take legal action, I say. Who me? She says. No way! Turns out she thinks neighbour might unleash the horsemen of the Apocalypse on her. Not much I can do then, I say. Well, what good are you, she says, and hangs up the phone.
10.30 a.m. Am sweltering myself. Go to ask administrator about Internet. She is sitting at her desk, staring into the middle distance, holding on to speak to anyone at service provider. Looks like she’s been there awhile.
10.32 a.m. Programme Director advises multiple project proposals for education/advocacy/tree planting/cleaning beaches projects have all been turned down. We’ll figure something out, I say, seeing the worry about her job in her eyes. But what?
11.00 a.m. Mail arrives. Two requests for talks to service clubs, both mentioning that no payment can be made. One request for materials for inner city group, no payment possible. One request for free collaboration on summer camp at uptown high school. Very likely that children going to that school have higher pocket money than my salary. Feel more aggrieved. Two invitations to workshops on corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt. Must be the policy flavours of the month. Three responses from regulators on Access to Information requests, saying they have got our requests and will soon respond. One invoice from auditors approaching J$300,000.00. Bill from pest control now looks like champagne picnic.
11.15 a.m. Whoo hoo! Internet is up. Send out e-mails. Landline rings. Environmental person on the other end tells me about land clearing on large scale in wetland area on north coast. Do something, Diana, environmental person says. (With or without consultation, I wonder, but do not say so.) But be careful, environmental person continues. I hear man behind it is dangerous. Great.
11.30 a.m. Call regulators to report devastating land clearance. Get only voice mail. Send e-mail. Error message. Internet down again.
11.45 a.m. Staff attorney brings in affidavit on sewage treatment plant that has not worked in 25 years. Start reading it. Blackberry buzzes. Is reporter asking if I know anything about devastating land clearance on north coast. Yes, I say. Do I have a comment, reporter wants to know. Bad thing, wetland protects us from flooding, storms, habitat for fish, bla bla, I say. Hear guy behind it is a badman, the reporter tells me. Uh-huh, I say.
Straight line rings. Is that the cabinet office? A man says. Sounds like the same guy who wanted Hotel Four Seasons. No, I say, but if you get them I have some suggestions. What? He says, annoyed. Never mind, I say, my attempt at humour falling flat. It’s NOT the cabinet office? the man says again. Is this 555-5555? It is, I say, but trust me, it’s not the cabinet office. Well, says the man, that’s the number on their website! He slams down the receiver. I wonder if the cabinet office is likely to be able to solve more complex problems if it can’t get the right telephone number on its website.
12.15 p.m. Lunch at desk. Cheese crunchies. Wonder about environmental impact of cheese crunchies – seems like nothing can be eaten anymore without causing poverty and environmental annihilation somewhere. Look at watch. Gosh. It’s not even NEARLY time to go home!
OK, I give up. I’m not snoozing and will not soon go back to sleep. I’m officially awake. Brain churning. That **** public meeting. That **** chairman of the public meeting. Those **** farmers/vendors/fishers – why do they believe the rubbish they have been told for generations, if not centuries, when the lies are evident?? Why don’t they believe ME? And what the **** is wrong with regulatory authority? Why don’t they ever SAY anything at a public meeting? Wonder what the cash flow at the office is like. Did we pay the motor vehicle insurance? Think that was donated. But not the health insurance. That must be due now. Wonder if anyone is pregnant and not telling me. Love my young, all female staff, but there are…issues.
5.30 a.m. Get out of bed, groggy, sweaty, due to energy conservation commitment to not use air conditioning. Couldn’t sleep? Husband asks. He is up early, due to long daily commute in giant vehicle, therefore eliminating all hope of family attaining carbon neutrality. Let us not even discuss my overseas travel schedule. Husband hands me a cup of Jamaican coffee. I sip the deforestation of the Blue Mountains. Being an environmentalist, I reflect, means being comfortable with cognitive dissonance.
6.00 a.m. Am seated at my venerable computer. I have three computer devices – (1) the wood burning computer at home. (2) A donor funded laptop at work. (3) A Blackberry that my tech savvy sister gave me. I can never remember where anything is. E-mail count this morning – 16. 12 are work related. I start to reply.
7.00 a.m. The landline rings. It’s a radio station. Can I do an interview on global warming and the hurricane season at 7.20 a.m.? I say OK, abandon the e-mails and Google the latest research on global warming. I’ve got an 8.00 a.m. meeting with a consultant who wants to find out the definitive answer to corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt while he gets paid and I don’t. That means I’ve got to get dressed while doing the radio interview. Don’t want to print out the Google research on global warming, because of the toll on trees somewhere. Try to memorize a figure or two in order to sound totally up to date.
7.20 a.m. Phone rings while I am in the shower. Radio interview is not about global warming but about an illegal development I’ve been making a fuss about. Other person being interviewed is the irate contractor whose bulldozers have been stopped by my anti development meddling. All like you, he bawls to the radio listening public, all like you waan sen us back to di day of bullfrog and peenie wallie. That’ll have to be the last word, I’m afraid, says the radio talk show host. I take a mop to the bathroom floor.
8.05 a.m. At work. Internet is down. This is a several times a day occurrence, for which Internet Service Provider blames person who installed the Local Area Network who blames Internet Service Provider or possibly the computers themselves. Tech savvy sister’s advice has been this: Every computer has a duppy (a ghost, for any non Jamaicans). Some days the duppy wins and some days you win. For this she went to college for four years??
Consultant calls to say he will be late. Weekend e-mail count on laptop – 19. Only two are SPAM from people telling me I have won the lottery.
8.30 a.m. Consultant arrives, straight from DC, apparently. He’s already sweltering. Office has no air conditioning. I invite him to take off his jacket and he does. I give him my stump speech about corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt and he writes furiously. I will never see his report and corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt will continue apace.
10.00 a.m. Staff member advises office environment intolerable due to rat infestation. Are the cats not working? I say. We have a flock? pride? fleet? herd? of cats at the office – well, they just appeared, along with a rooster – we didn’t organize them or anything. Staff member shrugs and mentions leptospirosis. Call pest control then, I say. Start Googling impacts of rat poison on soil and ground water, but Internet still down. Muse on likelihood of raising money to pay pest control bill. Conclude nil.
10.10 a.m. Continue with e-mails, all piling up in outbox. Note am being berated by other environmental people for insufficient consultation. Feel aggrieved.
10.20 a.m. Phone rings. It’s a woman unable to breathe due to neighbour’s constant burning. She waxes eloquent about deficiencies of environmental regulators and health ministry. Phone beeps – call waiting is destroying my sanity, I think. I ask the breathless woman to hold and pick up the beep. Is that the Hotel Four Seasons? A man says. No, I say. You don’t have any rooms? The man says. No, I say, this is the Jamaica Environment Trust. But see yah now, says the man, rhetorically.
Return apologetically to the woman with the pyromaniac neighbour. She wants to know what I can do for her. We can help you take legal action, I say. Who me? She says. No way! Turns out she thinks neighbour might unleash the horsemen of the Apocalypse on her. Not much I can do then, I say. Well, what good are you, she says, and hangs up the phone.
10.30 a.m. Am sweltering myself. Go to ask administrator about Internet. She is sitting at her desk, staring into the middle distance, holding on to speak to anyone at service provider. Looks like she’s been there awhile.
10.32 a.m. Programme Director advises multiple project proposals for education/advocacy/tree planting/cleaning beaches projects have all been turned down. We’ll figure something out, I say, seeing the worry about her job in her eyes. But what?
11.00 a.m. Mail arrives. Two requests for talks to service clubs, both mentioning that no payment can be made. One request for materials for inner city group, no payment possible. One request for free collaboration on summer camp at uptown high school. Very likely that children going to that school have higher pocket money than my salary. Feel more aggrieved. Two invitations to workshops on corruption/overfishing/squatting/debt. Must be the policy flavours of the month. Three responses from regulators on Access to Information requests, saying they have got our requests and will soon respond. One invoice from auditors approaching J$300,000.00. Bill from pest control now looks like champagne picnic.
11.15 a.m. Whoo hoo! Internet is up. Send out e-mails. Landline rings. Environmental person on the other end tells me about land clearing on large scale in wetland area on north coast. Do something, Diana, environmental person says. (With or without consultation, I wonder, but do not say so.) But be careful, environmental person continues. I hear man behind it is dangerous. Great.
11.30 a.m. Call regulators to report devastating land clearance. Get only voice mail. Send e-mail. Error message. Internet down again.
11.45 a.m. Staff attorney brings in affidavit on sewage treatment plant that has not worked in 25 years. Start reading it. Blackberry buzzes. Is reporter asking if I know anything about devastating land clearance on north coast. Yes, I say. Do I have a comment, reporter wants to know. Bad thing, wetland protects us from flooding, storms, habitat for fish, bla bla, I say. Hear guy behind it is a badman, the reporter tells me. Uh-huh, I say.
Straight line rings. Is that the cabinet office? A man says. Sounds like the same guy who wanted Hotel Four Seasons. No, I say, but if you get them I have some suggestions. What? He says, annoyed. Never mind, I say, my attempt at humour falling flat. It’s NOT the cabinet office? the man says again. Is this 555-5555? It is, I say, but trust me, it’s not the cabinet office. Well, says the man, that’s the number on their website! He slams down the receiver. I wonder if the cabinet office is likely to be able to solve more complex problems if it can’t get the right telephone number on its website.
12.15 p.m. Lunch at desk. Cheese crunchies. Wonder about environmental impact of cheese crunchies – seems like nothing can be eaten anymore without causing poverty and environmental annihilation somewhere. Look at watch. Gosh. It’s not even NEARLY time to go home!
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
In the Shadow of Mountains
I was born in the shadow of mountains; this is an unremarkable fact, as it is true of anyone born in the city of Kingston. But there is a particular mountain that I think of as mine – Jack’s Hill. I never thought it was well named – Jack’s Hill sounds like something from a nursery rhyme, small and unimportant, and my mountain is both serene and imposing. As for Jack – I don’t know who he was.
My family lived on Sandhurst Crescent when I was a baby, in the shadow of Jack’s Hill. We moved to Stanton Terrace – in the shadow of Long Mountain. And then when I was ten, we went to Liguanea Avenue, to a rambling, inconvenient house that was dominated by an unconstrained and close up view of Jack’s Hill. I was home.
It is a triangular shaped mountain, like the three fat middle fingers of a green giant, the lower reaches and folds still forested, the upper slopes grassy and bare of all but a few trees. It burns several times a year because careless people light fires or discard cigarettes, and it turns black and like a small, angry volcano, sheds ash on the houses of the rich people below. A Jack’s Hill address is one of the best in Kingston.
I got to choose my bedroom when we moved to Liguanea Avenue – I was the eldest child. So I chose the room without air conditioning – which was an amazing novelty at the time – because it had a view of Jack’s Hill. I moved my bed under the window, so I could wake up and look out and see Jack’s Hill before I did anything else. It is my earliest recollection of a sense of wonder.
Sometime in the 1960s, a developer cut a road across the green and pleasant face of Jack’s Hill. I remember my father saying the ugly scar would be there for twenty years. In fact, almost fifty years later, the destruction is still discernible, although not as raw as it was when I was a teenager.
There has been construction on Jack’s Hill – some houses are barely visible through trees, others are large concrete boxes without aesthetic merit clinging to ridges. Last week I waited in a doctor’s office on the third floor of a high rise building in Kingston and all around me I could see the mountains I had grown up with – the far away heights of the Blue Mountains (assaulted by clearing for coffee and failed plantation forests), Long Mountain (much defaced by housing), Dallas Mountain (chopped up by limestone mining and charcoal burners), and Jack’s Hill, cleared to bare dirt in places to make fire breaks around million dollar homes, to plant crops, and cleared for clearing's sake. It must be that we who live in the shadow of the mountains no longer see them, because if we did, if we felt that sense of awe and wonder I first encountered as a ten-year-old, we would never have allowed what has happened to them.
I went once to a place where no building was allowed on the hills around – these were hills, not mountains, not like our mountains. It was Santa Fe in New Mexico and it was in the 1980s – so things could have changed. But then no one could build on the hills, the forests were protected, and when you stood in the city, all around you could see unblemished vistas. Not even a movie star had managed to change the minds of the planners. Here in Jamaica, if you talk about protecting a view from “development” you are considered certifiably insane.
I had to leave Jamaica to experience a forest. Before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I thought a forest was simply an assembly of trees, and I used to talk about the importance of planting trees to replace the ones cut down. But when I climbed into the Hoh Rain Forest of the Olympic National Park in Washington State, I understood for the first time what the term “forest” really means – it is not merely a tree farm planted by humans, but a complex organism of ferns and mosses and birds and lichens and insects and trees of different ages and sizes and types. I saw a nurse log in the Hoh Rain Forest and it was explained to me how when old trees died, they crashed through the forest opening up areas to light, and how seeds found root in the rotting bark of the fallen tree and started to grow there, and then the nurse log would rot and there would be an arch in the roots of the young trees who had found their start on the nurse log, a straight line of arches, showing the ghost of the fallen tree. I came back to Jamaica and went up into the Blue Mountains and unless you really get off the beaten track, found an utterly ruined forest.
I’ve been thinking about what brings Jamaicans together. I know all about what divides us – race, class, history, income, wealth, address, language, born yah, ex pat or returning resident, ghetto pickney or uptown bwaii, donkey man, bicycle man, Prado man, fisherman, ganja man, helicopter man, politician, businessman. The list is long and seems to grow ever longer. And what unites us? You might say Usain Bolt or the Reggae Boyz - until you see how quickly we turn on them if they stop winning. Then it struck me that it is our land that truly unites us, the physical place, this island. Pretty much every Jamaican, resident or migrant, will assert that Jamaica is a beautiful country – even the most beautiful in the world. This is something we will all defend, if only in theory.
And yet – we do our best to make this near universal source of Jamaican pride – a lie. We chop down and dig up and develop and misguidedly “beautify” until we no longer see where we really live, in the shadow of towering mountains, at the edge of a deep, murmuring sea.
I still love Jack’s Hill. Waking up in its shadow as I grew into teenage and young adulthood made me understand at least one passage in the Bible, when I heard it for the first time in Scripture class – I look towards the hills, from whence cometh my help…
My family lived on Sandhurst Crescent when I was a baby, in the shadow of Jack’s Hill. We moved to Stanton Terrace – in the shadow of Long Mountain. And then when I was ten, we went to Liguanea Avenue, to a rambling, inconvenient house that was dominated by an unconstrained and close up view of Jack’s Hill. I was home.
It is a triangular shaped mountain, like the three fat middle fingers of a green giant, the lower reaches and folds still forested, the upper slopes grassy and bare of all but a few trees. It burns several times a year because careless people light fires or discard cigarettes, and it turns black and like a small, angry volcano, sheds ash on the houses of the rich people below. A Jack’s Hill address is one of the best in Kingston.
I got to choose my bedroom when we moved to Liguanea Avenue – I was the eldest child. So I chose the room without air conditioning – which was an amazing novelty at the time – because it had a view of Jack’s Hill. I moved my bed under the window, so I could wake up and look out and see Jack’s Hill before I did anything else. It is my earliest recollection of a sense of wonder.
Sometime in the 1960s, a developer cut a road across the green and pleasant face of Jack’s Hill. I remember my father saying the ugly scar would be there for twenty years. In fact, almost fifty years later, the destruction is still discernible, although not as raw as it was when I was a teenager.
There has been construction on Jack’s Hill – some houses are barely visible through trees, others are large concrete boxes without aesthetic merit clinging to ridges. Last week I waited in a doctor’s office on the third floor of a high rise building in Kingston and all around me I could see the mountains I had grown up with – the far away heights of the Blue Mountains (assaulted by clearing for coffee and failed plantation forests), Long Mountain (much defaced by housing), Dallas Mountain (chopped up by limestone mining and charcoal burners), and Jack’s Hill, cleared to bare dirt in places to make fire breaks around million dollar homes, to plant crops, and cleared for clearing's sake. It must be that we who live in the shadow of the mountains no longer see them, because if we did, if we felt that sense of awe and wonder I first encountered as a ten-year-old, we would never have allowed what has happened to them.
I went once to a place where no building was allowed on the hills around – these were hills, not mountains, not like our mountains. It was Santa Fe in New Mexico and it was in the 1980s – so things could have changed. But then no one could build on the hills, the forests were protected, and when you stood in the city, all around you could see unblemished vistas. Not even a movie star had managed to change the minds of the planners. Here in Jamaica, if you talk about protecting a view from “development” you are considered certifiably insane.
I had to leave Jamaica to experience a forest. Before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I thought a forest was simply an assembly of trees, and I used to talk about the importance of planting trees to replace the ones cut down. But when I climbed into the Hoh Rain Forest of the Olympic National Park in Washington State, I understood for the first time what the term “forest” really means – it is not merely a tree farm planted by humans, but a complex organism of ferns and mosses and birds and lichens and insects and trees of different ages and sizes and types. I saw a nurse log in the Hoh Rain Forest and it was explained to me how when old trees died, they crashed through the forest opening up areas to light, and how seeds found root in the rotting bark of the fallen tree and started to grow there, and then the nurse log would rot and there would be an arch in the roots of the young trees who had found their start on the nurse log, a straight line of arches, showing the ghost of the fallen tree. I came back to Jamaica and went up into the Blue Mountains and unless you really get off the beaten track, found an utterly ruined forest.
I’ve been thinking about what brings Jamaicans together. I know all about what divides us – race, class, history, income, wealth, address, language, born yah, ex pat or returning resident, ghetto pickney or uptown bwaii, donkey man, bicycle man, Prado man, fisherman, ganja man, helicopter man, politician, businessman. The list is long and seems to grow ever longer. And what unites us? You might say Usain Bolt or the Reggae Boyz - until you see how quickly we turn on them if they stop winning. Then it struck me that it is our land that truly unites us, the physical place, this island. Pretty much every Jamaican, resident or migrant, will assert that Jamaica is a beautiful country – even the most beautiful in the world. This is something we will all defend, if only in theory.
And yet – we do our best to make this near universal source of Jamaican pride – a lie. We chop down and dig up and develop and misguidedly “beautify” until we no longer see where we really live, in the shadow of towering mountains, at the edge of a deep, murmuring sea.
I still love Jack’s Hill. Waking up in its shadow as I grew into teenage and young adulthood made me understand at least one passage in the Bible, when I heard it for the first time in Scripture class – I look towards the hills, from whence cometh my help…
Friday, June 5, 2009
Signs of the Times - Treasure Beach on the edge
What rules will apply to development in Treasure Beach? Will anything have been learned from the mistakes made in other parts of Jamaica?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Losing our Treasures (II)
Construction on the Treasure Beach canal has stopped, or so I’m told by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). Of course, it “stopped” after the National Works Agency (NWA) had finished what they intended to do in this Phase One, had packed up their bulldozers and headed off to seek other funding to complete the destruction. A NEPA vehicle was then seen in the area shortly after the NWA departed, with the occupants staring morosely at the canal. “You guys are three years too late!” shouted a passerby. I predict there will now be “meetings” and “regularization” and possibly even a “probe.” I further predict no one will be found responsible for this ignorant, lawless and reckless action, and there will be no sanctions applied.
I received two thoughtful emails on my first blog and a case study we had done on the Treasure Beach canal. The case study is not entirely completed, but will eventually be posted on the website of the Jamaica Environment Trust at http://www.jamentrust.org/ and on the Treasure Beach forum www.treasurebeach.net, if the webmaster will accept it.
Sandy Tatham of Treasure Beach wrote: “Great Bay is unlike any of the other Treasure Beach bays. Sheltered by the Great Pedro Bluff, this bay does not normally experience the “rough and dangerous” seas of the rest of the coastline. Great Bay does not have undertows, the sands are lighter in colour, and the beach more often than not, much wider and deeper than the other bays. This majestic bluff is the saving grace of this little village.The fact that Great Bay is entered by an entirely different approach to the rest of Treasure Beach, and ends at a dead end along side the Bluff, is I believe, its other saving grace. My most important point though, is the fact that Great Bay, has NEVER been subdivided. It is the least developed / developing of the Treasure Beach villages, apart from Fort Charles, which suffers from a lack of water. Very few pieces of land have changed hands in recent years, as most of the lands remain in the hands of large land owners who continue to farm their land as they have done through several generations: goats, sheep, cows and some cash crops. My family are amongst the “newcomers” and we have been here since 1969! The subdivision and developments you speak of have taken place mostly in the areas of Sandy Bank, Olde Wharfe, and along the main Treasure Beach Road, NOT Great Bay. Great Bay, unfortunately, though, has been the village that has suffered the most as a result of these subdivisions and development. Most of the ponds, several springs and few wells are found in Great Bay. I was once took Ann Sutton and fellow scientists to one of our “hidden” ponds and spring. They needed to go by foot, as they had, by plane, determined that this spot had the highest indigenous duck count on the island. All of this is what makes Great Bay so special ..... But since man has intervened by raising the level of the main road to Treasure Beach, allowed the subdivisions you speak of and subsequent building of plazas along the main road, when the rains come, these ponds fill and can no longer flow into the sea, as they once did. Instead, the waters back up and flood Great Bay. The old timers will tell you that the waters used to “walk” from the Great Pedro Pond across the main road through marshy lands and exit into the ocean close to the Treasure Beach Hotel. I even remember walking this in my childhood. Another contributing problem is the building and road works in the higher lands above the bays. These have redirected the flow of water, bringing much larger quantities down into the low lying areas causing destruction of roads and hill side. It is quite devastating. Most only see the destruction where homes and businesses are affected, but there are other areas where entire landscapes are changing due to the mass of water pouring off the hills. While it is imperative to have this canal problem rectified, sadly, the problem is much greater than just this and needs to be examined on a larger scale.”
Andreas Oberli from Irish Town wrote: “In 1979 I walked for the first time from Calabash east to Great Bay. The landscape was very special: Fine yellow grass like a large animal’s fur and here and there these enormous seagrape trees and bull thatch palms, a few little bays with shallow clear water (one of them where now the new canal joins the sea), one new house (large, ugly, surrounded by lawn and coconut trees) which we were able to ignore, the majestic bluff in front of us across the blue bay – and the wide beach of Great Bay!The beach is still there, even now. It went away in the last big storms, and it always comes back quite quickly. But the walk you can’t do anymore....”
And I received a wonderful letter from Artie Parchment of Great Bay in Treasure Beach. Artie says in part: “I am 85 years of age, throughout these years I have never experienced flooding as we had in 2005. Our property value has plunged to zero because the ponds have taken over, or washed away all the fences and tracks to secure and get to it. I definitely agree in regards the ecological problems. Our idea was not to drain the ponds completely but to keep them from overflowing when we have hurricanes with heavy rains…we really have a problem and I sincerely hope a solution will be found before the good Lord takes me away. The problem now is to satisfy the people of Great Bay and the ecology.”
This is an elder from the community who has been personally been affected by the flooding; yet still he writes of the importance of the ecology. If only we had people in positions of authority and power who shared Artie Parchment’s mindset, who valued the beauty and functionality of our land, who would take measured decisions about development based on careful study, considering both the short and the long term, and who respected our Jamaican law. Then and only then, we might have a Treasure Beach with its treasures intact forever.
I received two thoughtful emails on my first blog and a case study we had done on the Treasure Beach canal. The case study is not entirely completed, but will eventually be posted on the website of the Jamaica Environment Trust at http://www.jamentrust.org/ and on the Treasure Beach forum www.treasurebeach.net, if the webmaster will accept it.
Sandy Tatham of Treasure Beach wrote: “Great Bay is unlike any of the other Treasure Beach bays. Sheltered by the Great Pedro Bluff, this bay does not normally experience the “rough and dangerous” seas of the rest of the coastline. Great Bay does not have undertows, the sands are lighter in colour, and the beach more often than not, much wider and deeper than the other bays. This majestic bluff is the saving grace of this little village.The fact that Great Bay is entered by an entirely different approach to the rest of Treasure Beach, and ends at a dead end along side the Bluff, is I believe, its other saving grace. My most important point though, is the fact that Great Bay, has NEVER been subdivided. It is the least developed / developing of the Treasure Beach villages, apart from Fort Charles, which suffers from a lack of water. Very few pieces of land have changed hands in recent years, as most of the lands remain in the hands of large land owners who continue to farm their land as they have done through several generations: goats, sheep, cows and some cash crops. My family are amongst the “newcomers” and we have been here since 1969! The subdivision and developments you speak of have taken place mostly in the areas of Sandy Bank, Olde Wharfe, and along the main Treasure Beach Road, NOT Great Bay. Great Bay, unfortunately, though, has been the village that has suffered the most as a result of these subdivisions and development. Most of the ponds, several springs and few wells are found in Great Bay. I was once took Ann Sutton and fellow scientists to one of our “hidden” ponds and spring. They needed to go by foot, as they had, by plane, determined that this spot had the highest indigenous duck count on the island. All of this is what makes Great Bay so special ..... But since man has intervened by raising the level of the main road to Treasure Beach, allowed the subdivisions you speak of and subsequent building of plazas along the main road, when the rains come, these ponds fill and can no longer flow into the sea, as they once did. Instead, the waters back up and flood Great Bay. The old timers will tell you that the waters used to “walk” from the Great Pedro Pond across the main road through marshy lands and exit into the ocean close to the Treasure Beach Hotel. I even remember walking this in my childhood. Another contributing problem is the building and road works in the higher lands above the bays. These have redirected the flow of water, bringing much larger quantities down into the low lying areas causing destruction of roads and hill side. It is quite devastating. Most only see the destruction where homes and businesses are affected, but there are other areas where entire landscapes are changing due to the mass of water pouring off the hills. While it is imperative to have this canal problem rectified, sadly, the problem is much greater than just this and needs to be examined on a larger scale.”
Andreas Oberli from Irish Town wrote: “In 1979 I walked for the first time from Calabash east to Great Bay. The landscape was very special: Fine yellow grass like a large animal’s fur and here and there these enormous seagrape trees and bull thatch palms, a few little bays with shallow clear water (one of them where now the new canal joins the sea), one new house (large, ugly, surrounded by lawn and coconut trees) which we were able to ignore, the majestic bluff in front of us across the blue bay – and the wide beach of Great Bay!The beach is still there, even now. It went away in the last big storms, and it always comes back quite quickly. But the walk you can’t do anymore....”
And I received a wonderful letter from Artie Parchment of Great Bay in Treasure Beach. Artie says in part: “I am 85 years of age, throughout these years I have never experienced flooding as we had in 2005. Our property value has plunged to zero because the ponds have taken over, or washed away all the fences and tracks to secure and get to it. I definitely agree in regards the ecological problems. Our idea was not to drain the ponds completely but to keep them from overflowing when we have hurricanes with heavy rains…we really have a problem and I sincerely hope a solution will be found before the good Lord takes me away. The problem now is to satisfy the people of Great Bay and the ecology.”
This is an elder from the community who has been personally been affected by the flooding; yet still he writes of the importance of the ecology. If only we had people in positions of authority and power who shared Artie Parchment’s mindset, who valued the beauty and functionality of our land, who would take measured decisions about development based on careful study, considering both the short and the long term, and who respected our Jamaican law. Then and only then, we might have a Treasure Beach with its treasures intact forever.
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