Res­i­dents of Four Roads in Diego Mar­tin op­po­site Vic­to­ria Keys and Vic­to­ria Gar­dens are call­ing for im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion of the rel­e­vant state au­thor­i­ties in­to what they claim is an il­le­gal vet­eri­nary cre­ma­to­ri­um in the area.

The res­i­dents claimed the car­cass­es of an­i­mals are in­cin­er­at­ed caus­ing a strong foul stench.

Res­i­dent Paul Scott, who along with a group of oth­er res­i­dents protest­ed on Sun­day, de­mand­ed the own­ers of Sun­nyview Vet­care Ser­vices cease all in­cin­er­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We have spo­ken to them many times where we told them that this burn­ing of an­i­mals are af­fect­ing us night and day. Some of us have health is­sues such as asth­ma and si­nus­es and it’s af­fect­ing us very bad­ly. Even that hor­ri­ble smell makes it dif­fi­cult for us to breathe and to en­joy the com­fort of our homes, in­side and out­side in our yards,” Scott said.

He added that they made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to get a res­o­lu­tion from sev­er­al state agen­cies in­clud­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI).

“We no­ticed that there were no in­cin­er­a­tion go­ing on for about three days and then of­fi­cials from one of the agen­cies came to do an air qual­i­ty test, ob­vi­ous they didn’t find any­thing right. But we need the agen­cies to make unan­nounced vis­its and test the qual­i­ty of air and see the smoke and smell what we have to, un­for­tu­nate­ly, en­dure since the start of the year, be­cause the in­cin­er­a­tion is a re­cent ad­di­tion to their ser­vices be­cause they have been around since 2016,” Scott al­leged.

The es­tab­lish­ment’s di­rec­tor Kel­ley Ca­ma­cho sent a de­tailed state­ment sent to Guardian Me­dia on April 21 through her at­tor­ney Shari Fitz­patrick.

Ca­ma­cho ex­plained that due to the lack of avail­able le­gal op­tions for pet cre­ma­tion in Trinidad, they con­duct­ed their re­search and even­tu­al­ly pur­chased a small state of the art unit from the USA.

“We chose to pur­chase a top-of-the-line cre­ma­to­ry unit for small an­i­mals. This unit is al­lowed in res­i­den­tial­ly zoned ar­eas in the US as it is con­sid­ered smoke­less and en­gages nu­mer­ous process­es to en­sure that the emis­sions pro­duced are less than that of a diesel en­gine ve­hi­cle and less harm­ful than burn­ing fos­sil fu­els. This unit was sub­stan­tial­ly more ex­pen­sive than oth­er units. How­ev­er, we con­sid­ered it a worth­while in­vest­ment to en­sure that no nui­sance was cre­at­ed to any mem­bers of the neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties and al­so to min­i­mize the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact,” Ca­ma­cho said.

She added that the unit was pur­chased in 2015 and start­ed the process to get all the nec­es­sary per­mits and al­so reached out to neigh­bours in Sep­tem­ber 2016 to in­form them of the in­ten­tion to open the pet cre­ma­to­ri­um.

Ca­ma­cho dis­closed that they asked the res­i­dents for their com­ments and al­so of­fered to an­swer their ques­tions/con­cerns re­gard­ing the unit, which some did.

“Many neigh­bours, how­ev­er, ig­nored our in­vi­ta­tion and re­fused to par­take in any civ­il dis­cus­sions with us. In­stead, they im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan mak­ing a bar­rage of false com­plaints to the EMA and oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions, claim­ing that they were see­ing and smelling smoke em­a­nat­ing from the unit. This was in 2016, long be­fore we had an op­er­a­tional unit- when it was not even hooked up. Twice the EMA came out to in­ves­ti­gate on­ly to find the unit was still in its pack­ag­ing and not even wired yet. We trust that the EMA will have a record of these com­plaints,” Ca­ma­cho fur­ther ex­plained.

She added that the neigh­bours al­so com­plained to the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion and Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion who came to in­ves­ti­gate be­tween 2017 and 2018 “when the unit was not yet op­er­a­tional.”

The com­pa­ny added it has no knowl­edge of any com­plaint be­ing made to CARIRI, say­ing it de­vel­oped its own air qual­i­ty strat­e­gy with CARIRI months be­fore be­com­ing op­er­a­tional and con­ducts month­ly air qual­i­ty test­ing dates with CARIRI of­fi­cials at its own ex­pense in or­der to com­ply with EMA guide­lines.

Ca­ma­cho, the di­rec­tor of Sun­nyview, al­leged that the pet cre­ma­to­ri­um and its staff have been ha­rassed by some res­i­dents.

“We have been sub­ject­ed to ha­rass­ment and bul­ly­ing by sev­er­al res­i­dents. We have at­tempt­ed to speak with and rea­son with these res­i­dents on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. How­ev­er, our at­tempts are usu­al­ly met with ob­scen­i­ties and in­sults, in­clud­ing ac­cu­sa­tions of be­ing “un­god­ly.”

Ca­ma­cho said that by Jan­u­ary 8 2021, they had ob­tained all the nec­es­sary ap­provals and per­mits re­quired for op­er­at­ing the pet cre­ma­tion unit, which was com­mu­ni­cat­ed by way of let­ter to all res­i­dents near­by.

The cre­ma­to­ri­um on­ly be­gan op­er­at­ing on March 22, 2021 and since that time has been run­ning on av­er­age three days per week for ap­prox­i­mate­ly five to six hours at a time dur­ing the hours of 10 am to 4 pm. Ca­ma­cho said the unit is de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to not pro­duce smoke when prop­er­ly op­er­at­ed and does not.

She ad­mit­ted in the ear­ly stages of op­er­at­ing the unit, they ex­pe­ri­enced smoke on three oc­ca­sions, and have since con­duct­ed train­ing sem­i­nars with the team and lo­cal tech­ni­cians who have ex­pe­ri­ence with cre­ma­tion to en­sure the kinks were ironed out.

She added the res­i­dents are well aware that Sun­nyview has com­plied with all reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies.