Yvonne Ba­boolal

A strength­ened En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty's (EMA) Po­lice Unit, work­ing with po­lice of­fi­cers, will now be crack­ing down on il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. "The aim al­so is to deal with the is­sue of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing head-on, in con­junc­tion with the EMA's En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice and oth­er mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice," Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. He added: "I am seek­ing to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice Unit with re­spect to num­bers of of­fi­cers and ve­hi­cles and equip­ment re­quired to do its job ef­fec­tive­ly." The EMA was giv­en teeth yes­ter­day when Mooni­lal signed a min­is­te­r­i­al or­der at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, that will amend the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act. "To­day, I signed the min­is­te­r­i­al or­der to have quar­ries un­der 150 acres re­turned to the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) process un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the EMA, hav­ing been re­moved by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in its plan to de­vel­op at any cost," Mooni­lal told the me­dia.

A pre­vi­ous le­gal no­tice, is­sued un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2007, took away ju­ris­dic­tion over quar­ries un­der 150 acres from the EMA. The amend­ment now has to go to Par­lia­ment. Present at the sign­ing-off were Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre chair­man Dr Ju­dith Gob­in; chair­man of Na­tion­al Quar­ries Ltd Mi­tra Ramkhelawan; Kelvin Ram­nath, chair­man of the EMA; CEO of the EMA Dr Joth Singh; and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. Mooni­lal said with­out pri­or com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the EMA, the EMA Act was amend­ed in 2007 and 2008 to reg­u­late on­ly quar­ries that were over 150 acres. He said he was in­formed by the EMA while there were now four quar­ries above 150 acres in T&T, on­ly two had sub­mit­ted CEC ap­pli­ca­tions since the leg­is­la­tion was changed.

Mooni­lal added: "Ap­par­ent­ly the is­sue we are now faced with is that op­er­a­tors have de­vised a mech­a­nism to sub­di­vide quar­ries that were in­tend­ed to be over 150 acres in­to small­er plots to avoid ap­ply­ing for a CEC. "The CEO of the EMA has al­so brought to my at­ten­tion that for every le­gal quar­ry there is an il­le­gal one. "Mon­i­tor­ing these il­le­gal quar­ries has proven to be very dif­fi­cult and, in some cas­es, a se­cu­ri­ty risk for EMA of­fi­cers."

Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment was faced with the added chal­lenge of en­sur­ing quar­ries which op­er­at­ed legal­ly with­out CECs, op­er­ate un­der best prac­tices. He said he had asked the EMA to im­ple­ment the Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion Rules and it was his in­ten­tion to see the pas­sage of the Air Pol­lu­tion Rules. The move comes af­ter the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs or­dered Na­tion­al Quar­ries last week to stop quar­ry­ing in Ver­dant Vale Val­ley on the north­ern side fac­ing the Asa Wright na­ture cen­tre. Gob­in had charged that the ag­gre­gate from the quar­ry­ing was to be used for a ma­jor Gov­ern­ment project, the Point Fortin High­way. While the amend­ment gives the EMA ju­ris­dic­tion over quar­ries, those un­der 150 acres which op­er­at­ed up to 2007 will con­tin­ue to do so with­out the re­quired Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC). Mooni­lal said it was not the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to dis­able the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try but to pro­vide guid­ance on how it could re­main eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able with­out com­pro­mis­ing the health of cit­i­zens and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. Ramkhelawan said Na­tion­al Quar­ries would lose sev­en mil­lion tonnes of ag­gre­gate and $800 mil­lion from the halt­ing of op­er­a­tions in the Ari­ma Val­ley.