Geisha Kow­lessar

The com­mu­ni­ty of San­ta Rosa West can breathe a sigh of re­lief, as tests in­di­cate there is no lead con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their wa­ter sup­ply. But traces of lead have been de­tect­ed in the soil. This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by CEO of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) Dr Joth Singh. Singh said the EMA re­ceived test re­sults from the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) late Mon­day af­ter­noon.

The EMA had con­tract­ed Cariri to do an in-depth in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­cide whether the breach of a con­crete cap had re­sult­ed in lead con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment. Wa­ter, sed­i­ment and soil sam­ples were test­ed for lead lev­els. Singh said on the ba­sis of the test re­sults, there was no in­di­ca­tion the wa­ter was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.

"The re­sults showed the wa­ter is not con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with lead, so there is no rea­son to wor­ry about the Ari­ma riv­er or wa­ter in the com­mu­ni­ty be­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with lead. The EMA is not at all con­cerned about the wa­ter, based on the re­sults we re­ceived," Singh said. He said, how­ev­er, tests showed lead in the soil. "But this is not sur­pris­ing, due to the area that was breached. But we need to know to what ex­tent, and that is what we are now work­ing on," Singh added.

He said Cariri was ex­pect­ed to do fur­ther soil test­ing. "What needs to be done now is depth pro­fil­ing, which would in­di­cate the lev­el of lead con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in­to the soil. That would tell us how far down the soil has been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed," Singh said. He said Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL), which had breached the lead-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area while dig­ging a re­ten­tion pond for a con­struc­tion site, must en­sure the area was prop­er­ly con­tained and re­sealed.

"Lead doesn't move quick­ly if it is in the soil. But the mat­ter still needs to be treat­ed with ur­gency in terms of con­tain­ment," Singh said. HCL, he added, was or­dered to stop all work and told to hire an en­vi­ron­men­tal en­gi­neer­ing con­trac­tor to do the con­tain­ment. "This would be thor­ough­ly scru­ti­nised by the EMA," Singh added.

A team from the EMA vis­it­ed San­ta Rosa West yes­ter­day to en­sure HCL had fenced off the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area and put up the nec­es­sary signs warn­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic. "When the team went to the com­mu­ni­ty they saw the area was fenced and there were warn­ing signs, so we are sat­is­fied that as­pect was done," Singh said.

He al­so main­tained the HCL will face penal­ties for breach­ing a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) and build­ing a sump, for which no per­mis­sion was grant­ed. San­ta Rosa West is a res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment with a pop­u­la­tion of thou­sands. Coun­cil­lor for Tumpuna, Hugo Lewis, has urged that soil test­ing be com­plet­ed in the quick­est pos­si­ble time."With the hot weath­er there would be dust par­ti­cles trav­el­ling in the air, and we must pre­vent that," Lewis said.

"What the HCL needs to do is to re­seal the area as soon as pos­si­ble." He said when the breach first oc­curred, the Ari­ma Bor­ough Coun­cil ad­vised its work­ers to stop col­lect­ing garbage at San­ta Rosa West as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure. Res­i­dents had to make al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments for garbage dis­pos­al. He as­sured, how­ev­er, that garbage col­lec­tion would re­sume as soon as pos­si­ble.