Pearl HARBOUR
Private sector leads latest pollution fight to make Kgn waterfront a sparkling gem
THE GRACEKENNEDY Foundation is leading the charge to rid the world’s seventh largest natural harbour of mounting filth.
The effort, which is among the downtown Kingston-based entity’s corporate social responsibility initiatives, is being undertaken in collaboration with the Mona Geoinformatics Institute (MGI) and the Centre for Marine Sciences at The University of the West Indies, Mona.
The first phase of that mission, which is currently under way, is a hydrodynamic modelling of solid waste in and around the Kingston Harbour to gauge the impact of the distribution and spread of garbage entering the sea from land-based sources.
“This is a private-sector initiative designed to do something tangible about the issue,” says MGI director, Dr Parris Lyew-Ayee Jr.
He pointed out that while there have been improvements in reducing the amount of waste entering the harbour, especially after the Soapberry Wastewater Treatment Plant in St Catherine was opened, there is still more work to be done.
“It is more serious than we think, but it actually is better than before. More than 10 years ago, we had millions of gallons of sewage flooding in, but since the opening of the Soapberry plant, that has taken off a lot of the sewage coming into the harbour.”
MAJOR GARBAGE FEEDER
However, he said that the harbour is still a lodgement area for styrofoam boxes, plastic bottles, and old household appliances, including refrigerators and stoves.
Following last September’s International Coastal Clean-up Day, Lyew-Ayee pointed to roughly 822,000 items being removed from the harbour and surrounding areas, carrying a weight of 135,000 pounds (more than 61 tonnes of garbage).
“That stuff going into Kingston Harbour is clogging mangroves, ship propellers and all types of things are floating around in the harbour. This does not make it appealing for tourists, investors, or people who want to live or shop downtown.”
Deputy director at the MGI, Ava Moxam, pinpointed the Sandy Gully as a major feeder of garbage into the harbour.
“This garbage originates somewhere in Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine. I can tell you that the Sandy Gully is a primary feeder of garbage. We also have other contributing gullies along the way. The Centre for Marine Sciences has lots of pictures of garbage collected on cays which kill mangroves and even animals by choking them,” she said.
The efforts to clean the harbour have the full support of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, and the latest push will entail numerical modelling, with inputs of particular wind speeds, direction, tide, current, and salinity.
“We set up a model to see, on a regular day, what the circulation in the Kingston Harbour looks like versus a flood-stage model. Under normal conditions, you get a lot of garbage trapped. Under the flood stage, there is a lot that can be washed down to the Kingston Harbour. But you have a lot of garbage being washed from land into the harbour as well. Our modelling shows that if we trap garbage from Sandy Gully, that would account for almost 30 per cent of the waste that goes there,” Moxam said.
For the next phase of the project, according to GraceKenendy Foundation Executive Director Caroline Mahfood, they will seek a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank.
“As you know, we (GraceKennedy Ltd) have been downtown for nearly 100 years. The harbour is our backyard. We need to work on bringing back commerce to downtown. Like overseas, where people come to the boardwalk and enjoy the harbour, we want to get back to that stage.
“The problem lies upstream, so we have to change the way people think. We felt there are lots of plans to fix up downtown, but nothing implemented [in terms of waste management]. We felt it was time,” she said of the initiative, which is also expected to lift the real estate value of properties in the area and to increase tourism prospects for the capital.
The time frame for completion is dependent on the buy-in of Government and the private sector. We have seen developments like restaurants. The harbour must be a place where people come down and enjoy. Let’s make [it] a place people flock to.