IT WAS ONLY a matter of time.
And even though she had hoped it would not have happened, Member of Parliament for St Thomas, Cynthia Forde, is not surprised that the molasses dumped at Mount Wilton had finally appeared in Coles Cave, one of the island’s premier hiking attractions.
“I am so hurt. I can’t tell you how I feel because that is the stomping ground for everybody who lives in Welchman Hall, Allen View – this whole Harrison’s Cave, Coles Cave area,” she said.
It was in early January that Forde called in the media to view the tonnes of molasses which had been dumped in what she called a coconut walk in the Mount Wilton area.
Three months have passed since she sounded the warning.
Disaster
And she predicted that eventually, with the parish’s high rainfall, the dumped molasses would make its way into either Harrison’s Cave or Coles Cave.
“The three-month period is up and that is why you are now seeing the manifestation in Coles Cave.
“But I was saying, ‘God, don’t let it happen’ and so said so done, Coles Cave is a disaster and it’s only matter of time before the molasses reaches the aquifer because when they were dumping it, it was during the rainy season,” she declared.
She insisted that she was not just another politician making noise, but one who cared about her environment and her country.
“But I knew that once [the rain] kept falling, because it rains here every day in St Thomas, and once the rains keep falling I know that we will have the water mixed with the molasses going into the aquifer,” she said.
An incensed Forde said not only has she spoken to the minister who had responsibility for Harrison’s Cave, but to the landowner on whose land the molasses was dumped.
“And I did tell the minister soon from now our 8th Wonder of the World will be so destroyed that what we have representing crystal clear stalactites and stalagmites will now turn black.”
She added it was sad that permission had apparently been granted to “drop molasses in an area that is designated a special environmental protection area”.
“It looks to me that Barbados would be destroyed by a few rich people, a few conglomerates in the country to the detriment to the rest of the almost 300 000 population,” she said, adding she hoped someone would launch a clean-up operation of the cave.
Heather-Lynn’s Habitat and Stephen Mendes of Hike Barbados hiked through the gully to two of the entrances to Coles Cave.
One was covered with galvanised sheets with pipe and pump extracting the molasses water from deep inside.
That water was being piped along the gully floor – a leak in the pipe afforded the opportunity to catch a scent of the molasses – into a large tank.
Farmers in the area explained they used the molasses/water mixture to irrigate their crops.
The gate to the other entrance was opened but there was no smell emanating from inside. There was also no scent coming from the third, often used other entrance.
However, there were times when a faint whiff of a sewage/molasses scent was borne on the light wind.
