“This was a massive wake-up call for us.” That was what one official in the Barbados Government said.
But there was no Government minister at what seemed to be a hastily called editors’ briefing on the off-and-on flooding of the South Coast over the past several months, culminating in the sewage debacle that occurred when six inches of rain fell within a few hours on the afternoon of Independence Day.
I attended the briefing, which was on the record but “not a press conference”, so I did not take notes, and offer here my understanding of what was said overall.
First, the Government admitted that the problems were caused by their own negligence. The technocrats admitted responsibility for a series of unforced errors (my term) relating to lack of routine maintenance of the sewerage plant on the South Coast. Just before the big rain, one of the four pumps had to be cannibalised in order to fix another one.
This inability to pump properly for some time led to a build-up of untreated sewage in the pipes that take it westward on Hastings and out to sea beyond the Hilton.
Incoming raw sewage topped up to dangerously high levels by additional water entering the pipes from manholes, and other points of entry, due to rain.
Too much incoming sewage had to be dealt with by only two pumps which were working leading up to the heavy rains of November 30. On top of that, they said, there was too much grease in the pipes, for which the system was “not designed”.
The Barbados Water Authority’s acting general manager, Dr John Mwanza, also admitted that the filtering of the sewage going into the station had ceased a long time before, so no removal of paper, card, plastic or sanitary products was taking place. It was all going into the out pipes, further clogging them up, instead of being removed and sent to a landfill. The system was “not designed” for that either, but it happened anyway. For a long time.
However, he said the pipes going out to sea were not backing up, as some have suggested, but divers were working on cleaning them anyway, as they should have been all along.
Patricia Inniss said there was ongoing pumping of the excess water even now, as should have been done all along.
The Barbados Tourism Investment Inc.’s chief executive officer, Stuart Layne, said that the corporation was funding the remedial work at the sewerage system at a cost of $2 million. This funding would be used to buy the new pump needed, put back in the filters, and get the system working right again, probably for the first time in years.
The deadline for a properly functioning sewerage system is March 2017. Mwanza also said no sewage had been dumped into the Graeme Hall swamp by the plant.
However, that is a statement that will never be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, because, according to a representative from the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), it was never tested directly.
The EPD director Anthony Headley outlined the regular testing regime undertaken year-round by the department on the most popular West and South Coast beaches. It was he who recommended to Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Joy St. John that Worthing Beach be closed after he saw how the run-off from the Graeme Hall swamp had built up behind the sluice gate.
The effect of raising that gate would certainly be noticed by people going to bathe at Worthing Beach and perhaps the beaches to the west of it. But was the water polluted with anything more than the brackish water from the wetland? He did not check.
Nobody did.
You may want to read that again.
It was not the EPD’s job to check the water in the swamp, only the water in the sea near the beach, said Headley.
So when was the Worthing beach next checked for those organisms with long Latin-esque scientific names, for whose control and snuffing out in defence of the nation’s public health the EPD exists?
Forty-eight hours later.
By then, the currents had been given ample time to do their work.
Not the next morning to see, beyond a visual check, how bad was the pollution which had concerned the EPD enough to advise the CMO to close the beach in the first place.
And so, whether the swamp water was full of sewage or not, the Government will conveniently never be able to say.
Those who say it was cannot prove it, and the Government, including Mwanza, who says it wasn’t, cannot disprove it, either.
And so, my friends, it was not any one big thing that brought the South Coast to its knees and threatened to ruin our tourism season upon which the entire economy depends. It was not some massive blow struck against our sewerage system that cost South Coast businesses collectively perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business and that made our most cohesive tourist-resident community a place that was almost unlivable for several days.
It was a series of unforced errors, made over time by an almost dedicated approach to not doing the basic things you need to do to maintain a sewerage plant. It was a near-death by a thousand small cuts.